


We Are Raw

by aynessa



Category: Charmed (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chris Revelation AU, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, F/M, Family Drama, Family Feels, Gen, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2019-07-15 14:31:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 56,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16065104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aynessa/pseuds/aynessa
Summary: Leo discovers that his unborn child is in danger of being erased by the ones he trusted the most, and the horrified Charmed Ones write a spell to make certain Piper's second child survives...only to be dragged into a terrifying future they could have never imagined. (Chris revelation story, AU)





	1. Tipping the Balance

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set after The Courtship of Wyatt's Father, but before Hyde School Reunion. Phoebe did not succeed at her vision quest, and thus her premonition powers are still being unreliable and sporadic.
> 
> Piper is about 4-5 weeks pregnant and showing the barest signs of pregnancy - namely, some nausea that comes and goes randomly, and a minor hormonal shift that has her rather on edge. She hasn't figured out that she's pregnant yet, but the Elders have, and are concealing this from Leo in fear that he will abandon his calling...among other reasons.

" _The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."_

_\- H. P. Lovecraft_

 

* * *

 

"Have you heard?"

"About the second one? Yes. Many are worried that this will tip the balance too far."

"And rightly so! This could change everything in unforeseeable ways."

"But what can be done? The last time the Elders tried to interfere, the Cleaners were completely ineffective. Their tenacity is just too strong."

Leo slowed his steps through the misty halls of the heavens, his eyebrows furrowing in puzzlement at the clicking conversation floating over to him. Many of the whitelighters and Elders congregating in recent weeks had been having hushed, worried conversations that immediately fizzled out as soon as he drew near. Though he had tried to hold on to the serenity and peace that was demanded of him as an Elder, still he could not help the seeds of suspicion blossoming in his heart. And at these words, he suddenly knew those suspicions had all been justified.

He only knew of one event where the Cleaners had ever failed...and that was when they tried to erase the memory of his son from the family - _his_ family.

Stealthily, praying that no one would notice his odd, fugitive motions, Leo slowly changed direction and moved closer to the group of three whitelighters whispering in a small corner off the edge of the hall. The power of invisibility, granted to him upon his ascension to the Council of Elders, would not serve him well here in the heavens where their angelic senses were impossibly heightened and honed. Frowning in concentration, Leo instead called upon the skills trained into him by the Valkyries. Lightening his footsteps and calming his breath, he quietly made his way forward and concealed himself in the shadowed alcove between two connected pillars. Bowing his head and closing his eyes, he focused on relaxing his facial muscles into the perfect picture of serenity - any passing Elder or whitelighter would assume that he was meditating or communicating with others, and would thus not disturb him. Secure in the knowledge that he was free to listen in on the conversation without anyone noticing his eavesdropping, he refocused on the hushed whispers...just in time to hear a sentence that froze his heart more effectively than Piper's fingers ever had.

"-doesn't matter anyway. What matters is that the eldest Halliwell is having yet another forbidden child. Something _must_ be done!"

Choking on the knot forming within his throat, Leo tried desperately to hold on to the aura of peace he was attempting to project, but the clamoring mix of rage, despair, jealousy, and horror was overwhelming. He grasped his hands together behind his back, choosing not to notice how they trembled with his building anger and sorrow.

He had known Piper would eventually find someone else to love her - who _couldn't_ love her, after all? - but he never realized it would be this fast, nor that she would have another child with a man who would most likely have no idea how lucky he was.

But before his reflections could progress further or focus on the strange declaration of an apparently 'forbidden' child, one of the gossiping whitelighters spoke again.

"What can we even do? There have been whitelighter-witch unions before, but _never_ has there even been a union between an Elder and a witch. This is a complete unknown! Even the Elders don't know what to do."

An _Elder_? But that meant-

Exhaling in a surprised whoosh of air, Leo reached up and covered his mouth to hold in the shout of joy he wanted to release.

Piper was pregnant.

With _his_ child.

"I overheard their most recent meeting. Many of the Elders fear that this child will be another Twice-Blessed."

"But there is only the one prophecy!"

"Even so, the situation points toward the possibility of this one being even _more_ powerful than their firstborn. That one whitelighter, Chris Perry - he came back to stop a great evil, but never revealed to the Council what that was. What if _this_ is the evil he came back to prevent?"

A chill coursed through the unseen Elder's veins at this suggestion.

That couldn't be possible. The evil that Chris was trying to prevent...though he refused to believe his beautiful baby boy could _ever_ turn into that evil entity from the future, hadn't Chris said that it was Wyatt who turned? Leo had been too horrified by the prospect to even consider reporting it to the Council - they had already tried to take away his son once before, after all, and there was no telling what they would do if they discovered they'd been right to fear his existence all along. But if Chris was telling the truth, then his second child couldn't possibly...

 _But he has lied before_ , whispered his mind.

"There's talk of deleting the pregnancy before the Halliwells notice."

_What!?_

"But they tried to erase the first child before and nearly caused the Charmed Ones to go back on everything they ever stood for. Think of what would happen if they tried and the Halliwells found out _this_ time."

"Regardless, it is not our decision. And we should not discuss this openly anyway. They are trying to keep this secret from...certain individuals...until a decision has been made."

His hands slowly clenched into fists.

_I won't let them take my children away from me._

With this thought firmly in his mind, Leo orbed.

 

* * *

 

All things considered, Chris was having a pretty good day.

The sisters were tolerating him again - despite his evasiveness when they demanded why he faded away during that whole genie mess - and he'd managed to be conceived without having to resort to a love potion or a spell, something that most assuredly would have gone wrong if he had attempted it. He'd finally managed a breakthrough on his latest trip to the Underworld, discovering hints and whispered rumors of an unnamed power recruiting demons for a secret mission involving the Charmed Ones and possibly Wyatt. He'd even managed to get more than three hours' sleep and had treated himself to coffee and a muffin this morning, all three of which were luxuries that had been exceedingly rare in his future.

So, all in all, he was in a rather good mood.

And then Leo orbed in.

The man looked _utterly_ ridiculous in those flowing golden robes - honestly, all the Elders were completely nuts if they thought wearing shiny robes somehow made them look more peaceful or benevolent. It made them look like strutting peacocks.

Attempting to hide his amusement behind a sarcastic smirk, Chris greeted him rather unenthusiastically. "Something I can do for you, Leo?"

The Elder's face darkened like a thundercloud. "Why didn't you tell me?"

There were many ways he could respond to such a loaded question. After all, it wasn't like there was just _one_ thing he was keeping from the man, and how could he possibly guess which secret Leo was talking about this time? So with a small sigh and a rather large amount of exasperation, Chris rolled his eyes in response. "Tell you what, Leo?"

Leo stalked towards him with an unrestrained fury on his face that reminded Chris instantly of another time early last year, when the man had been fresh from Valhalla and ready to point swords at the source of his unintended kidnapping. Despite everything he'd seen and been through, Chris couldn't help himself from taking a step back at the sight of his father's rage.

"About my child!" he shouted at the witchlighter. Abruptly, the faint sounds of talking from downstairs broke off.

Chris scowled. "I have _no_ idea what you're talking about. I already told you that I'm here to save Wyatt-"

"Not Wyatt!" Leo yelled, incensed. "My other child!"

Chris froze in horror, his eyes shooting up to meet Leo's enraged gaze. Despite his usual ability to think through any problem, to strategize and plan at a moment's notice, the only thought he could summon at this proclamation was simply: _Oh crap._

Footsteps thundered up the stairs, and the three sisters clattered noisily into the room, bodies tense and poised for battle. Piper took in the sight of Leo looming menacingly over Chris, her whitelighter's wild-eyed stare, and the demon-free attic, then slowly lowered her outstretched hands.

"What's going on here?"

"Chris," Leo hissed the word like it was a curse. "Was just about to explain why he never told us about our second child."

"Our _what_?" Piper repeated sharply, her sisters' exclamations of surprise echoing behind her.

Silence fell at these words, with all eyes fixating upon Chris. Who looked mere seconds away from bolting or orbing away in panic, his eyes darting swiftly around the room as though looking for feasible exits.

"Answer me!" Leo demanded.

Chris' jaw tightened and and ground together slightly, as if he were processing exactly what could be said to diffuse the situation. Then his mouth slowly opened, and he started to say: "I can't-"

" _Don't_ finish that sentence," Piper warned menacingly. Chris' mouth shut immediately with an audible click of teeth. "Now, _someone_ better explain to me what is going on."

Leo sent one last spiteful look toward the younger man, before turning towards the sisters with a serious expression. "I overheard a conversation Up There that I apparently wasn't meant to hear."

He paused, frowning as his eyes darted down to Piper's stomach and then back up to her face. "The Elders discovered that you're, well...you're pregnant."

All three of the sisters' eyes widened at this statement, Piper's eyebrows shooting up on her forehead in surprise. "But that's impossible, we-"

She broke off, blinked, and then flushed slightly. "Oh."

Leo, too, suddenly seemed to realize the implications of his statement and blushed, his eyes darting off to focus on one of the many uncoordinated furnishings cluttering the attic. "Y-Yeah."

Phoebe squealed, ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room. "We're going to have another baby in the house?"

"Oh great," groaned Paige. "More diaper duty."

Out of the corner of her eyes, Piper noticed that Chris looked wholly uncomfortable with this entire conversation - and yet, somehow, oddly relieved. He opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it, swallowed, and then grimaced. "Right, um, I'll just go-"

"Stop right there, mister," Piper threatened, pointing a finger at him threateningly. "Why didn't you tell us about this before?"

His mouth twisted in discomfited embarrassment. "Because telling you could have caused h- _the child_ to be conceived too early or too late, therefore completely changing the timeline in ways I don't even want to think about. Would you have really wanted me to mess with that?"

There was a short pause while the sisters and Leo considered this option.

"He has a point," Paige commented thoughtfully. Piper huffed beside her, unwilling to admit that she agreed.

"So is it a girl or a boy?" Phoebe inquired excitedly, her wide grin threatening to take over her entire face.

"I can't tell you that," he said in exasperation.

" _Chris_ ," she whined.

"That's not important," Leo suddenly interrupted, with a strange urgency to his voice. Everyone in the room turned to regard him with varying levels of surprise and confusion. "The Elders are worried. There's talk of deleting your pregnancy before you could find out naturally."

Piper's face changed from surprise to absolute fury in seconds. "Over my dead body."

Chris flinched violently, and closed his eyes to conceal the pain her words sparked within him. Thankfully, everyone's focus was still on Leo and his slip went unnoticed.

"How could they?" Paige demanded, outraged. "The last time they tried to meddle, I'm pretty sure we warned them never to try something like that again."

"I know," Leo replied, his face pinched with worry. "But apparently they're worried that our child will be more powerful than Wyatt because I'm an Elder now, and that it might tip the balance of good and evil too much. Thankfully they haven't decided to try anything yet, but..."

He trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence.

"Hey! Future boy." Piper stepped towards her whitelighter, glaring at him until he slowly turned to face her with a carefully blank face. "Let's solve this right now. Tell me about my child."

His voice was soft, regretful. "You know I can't do that, Piper."

"Well you better change your mind. _Now_."

"I cannot tell you," Chris replied slowly, enunciating each syllable carefully as if speaking to a particularly dense child. "You _know_ I can't tell you about the future."

"I don't care!" she snapped. "My child is in danger of being erased, and I want to know what happens to my baby!"

The whitelighter from the future pressed his lips together in a thin line. He seemed to struggle for a moment internally, and then sighed. "They're alive, okay? Satisfied?"

Piper breathed a heavy sigh of relief, raising up her hands to gently cover her stomach as if she could already feel the life growing within her. "Thank God."

"Well _I'm_ not satisfied," Leo retorted with a dark scowl. "The Elders are terrified because there's never been a union between an Elder and a powerful witch before, and no one will tell me anything about it. I had to eavesdrop in order to find out everything I did. What decision do they come to in your time, Chris?"

Chris hesitated, his green eyes darkening in visible worry. "I...don't know."

Leo's scowl deepened. "You're lying."

"No!" the whitelighter exclaimed, surprisingly appearing to be just as concerned as them over this new development. "I really don't know! This wasn't supposed to happen."

He flinched slightly as the words left his mouth, clearly regretting his choice of words.

"What do you mean?" the Elder said suspiciously.

Chris hesitated. "Originally, you became an Elder... _after_ your second child was born."

The tension in the room skyrocketed.

"So this is your fault," Leo hissed maliciously. Alarm sparked within the whitelighter's jade orbs, but he kept his face perfectly clear of his building anxiety.

"It doesn't matter. Your child lives and is fine in the future, regardless of what was changed."

"Doesn't matter?" Piper repeated in outrage.

"Weren't you just telling us you didn't want to mess with their, er, conception?" Paige pointed out, her expression torn between amusement and disgust.

Chris huffed impatiently. "I didn't!"

"But you did," Piper interrupted, her eyes glittering with anger. "You messed with my family, _again_."

"Piper-" he began heatedly.

"No, Chris. I'm tired of you messing with our lives. Either tell me what happens to my child, or get out."

They stared at each other across the attic, silence stretching between them like an impassable ravine.

"I can't," he whispered finally.

"Can't?" Leo repeated calmly, his eyes hard as flint. "Or won't?"

The time-traveler didn't seem to know how to answer, continuing to stare at Piper's aggressive expression with regret reflected in his eyes.

"Then let's write a spell," Phoebe suddenly suggested firmly.

Paige nodded beside her, then blinked. "...wait, what?"

"We write a spell to see what happens, so we can know what decision the Elders make in the future."

Chris flung an arm out wildly. "No! Absolutely not. There is far too much risk of personal gain that could cause it to backfire."

"This isn't up to you," Piper growled, choosing to ignore the scowl he directed at her. "And I think that's a brilliant idea, Phoebe."

"I dunno..." Paige responded doubtfully.

"I hate to say it, but Chris is right. This could backfire in so many ways," Leo warned, but he seemed unsure whether he really wanted to be fighting their decision in the first place.

Piper threw her hands up in the air in a show of complete frustration. "What else can we do, Leo? Just sit back and wait for them to decide whether to _kill_ our baby? No. I'm going to find out what happens to my child, and I will do it with or without your help."

He bristled in response. "Of course I'm going to help! I just...think this could go horribly wrong."

"I don't care," she snapped.

"No, you can't do this!" Chris protested. "There are too many things about the future that you shouldn't-"

"So help me Chris, if you don't stop that sentence right now, I _will_ blow you up!"

"Fine!" he snapped, throwing his arms up in an eerily similar gesture. "But don't blame me when it all goes wrong."

"Fine!" she sniped right back at him, whirling around to storm out of the attic. "I'm going to call Dad to see if he'll take care of Wyatt. Phoebe, start writing!"

Phoebe immediately ran to their unofficial spell-writing table, throwing herself down gleefully in the chair and starting to work. Paige sighed, announced that she needed more coffee, and followed her older sister out of the attic.

"This is going to end badly," Chris declared to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like my work, please consider [buying me a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/cassavey)


	2. Portals and Flames

_"This is the way the world ends:_

_Not with a bang, but a whimper."_

_\- T. S. Eliot_

 

* * *

 

"Alright, are we ready?"

Piper hovered over Phoebe's shoulder, staring down at the pages of writing and scribble that her younger sister was currently working on. They looked up at Paige's question as she stepped into the attic.

"Leo is taking Wyatt to Dad's," Piper answered. "He should be back short-"

Jingling orbs appeared at the end of her sentence, lighting up the attic briefly and coalescing into the form of Leo - who had since removed his Elder robes and changed back into his usual button-down shirt and blue jeans.

"Victor says he can take care of Wyatt for a few hours," Leo announced as he reformed. "I told him we should only need 20 or 30 minutes at the most, but he insisted on spending time with him."

"That's fine," Piper replied, smiling. "We'll just go pick him up before dinner."

"Assuming something doesn't go horribly wrong because of personal gain," Chris interjected snidely, flipping the page he'd been looking at in the Book of Shadows with more force than was quite necessary. Her smile morphed into an irritable frown.

"You're still here?" she asked waspishly.

The witchlighter crossed his arms defensively and scowled in response. "Someone has to be here to fix this when it backfires on you."

Just as Piper opened her mouth to snipe back at him, Phoebe cried: "Okay, I think I've got it!"

Thoroughly distracted, Piper hurried over to the table Phoebe was sitting at, joining Paige in reading over the finished spell. Chris left his place at the Book's podium and moved towards them, only to be barred by a hand on his chest pushing him back.

"Stay out of this," Leo growled.

A muted mix of anger and dislike flared in his eyes. "Seeing as I have more experience with time travel than any of you, I should look over-"

"No, Chris. You have no right to get involved in any of this."

Leo stalked away without waiting for a response, joining the sisters at the table. Chris' expression darkened, and he scowled at Leo's back.

"I have more right than you'll ever know," he snarled quietly. After allowing himself a few moments to glare at the man in hatred, he took a deep breath and then sighed, forcibly calming himself down.

Chris stood where he was for a few beats of silence, just watching the sisters as they read through the spell and suggested minute changes to the wording. From the first moment Phoebe had voiced her suggestion, a growing sense of impending disaster had festered within him, crawling under his skin like a black cloud. No matter what the sisters thought, there was no way this could go exactly how they wanted - there was too much personal gain involved to allow them to risk this. And yet, none of them would give him even a fraction of their attention to listen to his warnings. Part of him was desperately afraid that the Elders would decide to delete him after all, but he had come back to the past with full knowledge of the possibility that he might be writing off his own existence. One could not mess about with the timeline for months on end and not expect imminent backlash. Nothing magical ever appreciated being tampered with, and he had been creating ripples in time from his changes for over a year now.

He just hoped that he would be able to find who or what turned Wyatt, before time itself decided to erase him for its own protection.

Chris' musings were interrupted as he realized the sisters were leaving the table and walking to a bare stretch of wall, with Phoebe in the middle of the trio, clutching her spell in both hands. Leo crowded behind them, hovering next to Piper and looking down at the paper with a distracted frown. Alarm bells went off in Chris' head at the sight.

"Are you sure this will create a way for us to see what happens without actually going to the future?" Leo questioned dubiously.

"Don't worry so much!" Paige chirped, waving one hand flippantly.

"But-"

"We ready?" Piper asked impatiently.

Phoebe nodded. "Ready."

The three women crowded together over the paper, reading out loud in perfect sync.

 

_"To see what we wish in time and space,_

_Make a viewing portal here in this place._

_So that we may protect whom the Elders scorn,_

_Show us the future of Piper's unborn."_

 

Nothing happened.

The sisters looked up at the wall they stood in front of in unanimous silence, then looked down at the paper, and back up again.

"Why isn't it wor-"

Phoebe's frustrated exclamation faltered and changed into a cry of "Aha!" as a swirling blue portal blossomed to life in front of them. Chris raised his eyebrows, thoroughly floored that their hasty spell had actually managed to work. Feeling vaguely hopeful that the meager plan might work after all, he carefully moved forward to try and garner a view of the portal without alerting Leo of his closeness.

"But it's not showing any-"

Paige's words broke off into wordless cry of horror as the portal bent in on itself, shuddered, and then exploded over them. All five of them were enveloped by the swirling vortex, coating them thoroughly in blue goop, and then dissolved in midair as the portal shuddered once more and finally disappeared.

"Well, that was unexpected," Paige commented brightly, smiling around at her sisters.

"At least we're not covered in blue slime," Piper sighed wearily, reaching a hand up to flip strands of hair out of her face.

"But this is weird," Phoebe commented in frustration, looking around. "The spell should have done _something,_ but we're still in the attic and we haven't learned any-"

She broke off as her roaming eyes landed upon their whitelighter. "Chris?"

Piper and Paige both turned at the unnerved tone of her voice, focusing their attention on the young man as well. The witchlighter's face had gone stark white in terror, his eyes darting around the attic in visible panic. He focused on the arrangement of the furniture, then roamed over the walls and floor, then at the view of the dark sky outside, and then at the wall they had been staring at - upon which was a faded triquetra symbol etched in chalk. His chest rose and fell rapidly, evidence of his increasingly panicked breathing.

Leo frowned as he noticed the dark clouds through the window. "Wasn't it mid-day when you cast the spell?"

The sisters frowned in unison. Piper's eyes lingered on their silent, horrified whitelighter as she replied, "Yes. It shouldn't be this dark already."

"Well, that's...weird." Paige stared at the costumes lining one side of the attic wall, her face scrunching up in confusion. "Have those always been there?"

Phoebe frowned. "No, but...that one looks vaguely familiar. It almost looks like-"

"We have to get out of here."

They all turned at the guttural, cracked voice emanating from the witchlighter. His eyes focused on them for a moment, so wide they could see the white surrounding his pupils, and then darted away to roam over the attic again as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"We have to go," Chris continued hoarsely. "Now."

"Listen, Chris-" Leo began condescendingly, crossing his arms in irritation.

_"Now!"_

Before they could protest further, the brunette launched himself at the sisters, wrapping his arms around all three of them before they could react, and orbed away.

"Chris!" Leo shouted in outrage, immediately dissolving into orbs to follow after the infuriating whitelighter's trail.

But before he dissolved completely, Leo couldn't help but notice the multiple shimmers that appeared where they had been standing, heralding the arrival of several demons.

 

* * *

 

"Chris, what-"

"-the hell is wrong with-"

"What's the big i-"

The sisters' outraged and confused exclamations faltered into shocked silence as they stared at the manor they had just been forcibly ejected from.

"Halliwell Memorial...Museum?" Piper read aloud in clear disgust, her eyes trained on the elegant sign planted in their front lawn.

Leo materialized beside them, scowling angrily. "What in the world is going-"

He too broke off, though his eyes were instead focused on the horizon line, where the ruined and smoking remnants of the city stood. His eyes widened. "W...what-"

"Run."

All eyes swiveled to focus on Chris, who suddenly looked cold, angry, frightened, and hardened all at once - as if years of terrible pain had somehow passed in the last few minutes. Some small part of Phoebe's brain absently noted that he looked similar to the way he'd first appeared in the attic months and months ago, as if layers that had been stripped away from his time in the past were suddenly slammed back up, all at once. He didn't look like their irritating, sarcastic, often defensive and belligerent whitelighter anymore.

He looked like a soldier.

"Run," he repeated, eyes blazing. "Or we will all die."

His eyes flickered up at the manor for a split second while they attempted to figure out a response to this sudden ridiculous command, and then he lunged forward to grab Piper's hand, yanking her unceremoniously toward himself.

 _"Hey-!"_ Piper spluttered. But she broke off at the sound of something impacting the ground behind her, and whirled her head around to stare at the cement where she'd been standing...upon which was a scorched black mark, smoking and crackling. She had just enough time to look up at the attic window, where a demon's hate-filled face scowled at her, before Chris tugged her hand to get her attention once more.

"RUN," he snarled, his expression almost alien in its ferocity.

This time, he didn't bother to give them a choice. He simply bolted, with his hand still clamped around Piper's and forcing her to stumble after him. Her sisters' and ex-husband's shocked cries echoed behind them, but then their pounding footsteps followed.

"After them!" a guttural voice shouted faintly from the manor they were leaving behind.

"Chris, what-" Piper stammered, dividing her attention between talking and making sure her feet hit the ground properly to keep up with her whitelighter's long strides. "Hold- hold on- what's-"

"Save your breath for running!" Chris snapped, but there was no heat behind his words. She could see his eyes frantically scanning the roads and buildings in front of them, planning where they would go and searching for imminent threats. The cozy houses and manicured lawns of Prescott Street swiftly gave way to dilapidated ruins and cratered roads, blackened grass and shattered buildings.

Never before had she seen their whitelighter looking so terrified; no matter what was happening, he was usually the calmest of all of them, even Leo - unless Wyatt was somehow endangered. But even when the Order had kidnapped her child and turned him evil, even then the fear on his face had only been a fraction of what she now could see. It was infectious, spawning an irrational terror in her heart for something wholly unknown, growing and expanding the further they ran.

A pained cry rang out suddenly behind them, sounding suspiciously like Paige. Piper started to turn her head, but Chris was faster - he twirled around mid-stride and sailed backwards, utilizing the momentum of his feet to rebound off of the cement and change their direction within an instant. She faltered at the sudden change in balance, her feet slipping on the dirty asphalt, but Chris yanked her arm expertly and righted her before she could tip too far to the side. They ran towards the nearby forms of Phoebe and Paige, who was sitting awkwardly on the ground, and Leo, who was bent over her shoes. He ripped the heel off one of the red shoes as they drew near, tossing it on the ground next to its broken twin.

"Heels are not good for running," she complained as they slid to a stop next to them.

"We don't have time for this!" Chris said impatiently, anger and fear warring on his face.

"Hey!" Piper snapped in return, rubbing her aching arm and attempting to snatch her hand away from his (with little success). "Maybe you should explain instead of biting our heads off!"

His eyes scanned the buildings around them, even as he responded tersely: "We're in my future."

They gaped at him, then looked around at the ruins of their city.

"This is only twenty years in the future?" Phoebe whispered, horrified.

"How do we know you aren't making this up?" Leo scowled.

Green eyes flashed in his direction, rage glimmering within their depths. "I don't know, Leo," he spat condescendingly. "Maybe because I told you not to cast that _stupid_ spell in the first-"

Chris flung an arm up wildly, interrupting himself mid-sentence. A metallic crash had the four denizens from the past whirling around to stare at the twitching, sparking remains of a round technological device that he had slammed into a ruined telephone pole.

The witchlighter bit off a curse. "We need to move."

"What was that?" Phoebe asked shakily, staring at the disfigured wires and metal parts.

"Probe to scan for magic," he answered shortly, turning in place and searching around the neighborhood ruins as if trying to figure out where they had ended up.

"Scan?" repeated Leo in surprise. "Magic has been exposed?"

"Well it's kind of hard to hide when the strongest witch in the world destroys every national government in one day," he responded offhandedly, clearly not paying attention to what he was telling them.

"What?!" the sisters yelped, just as Chris said triumphantly: "This way."

The witchlighter jogged east, further into the outskirts of the city and away from the manor, still dragging Piper with him. His hand was clamped around hers like a iron band, immovable and unrelenting no matter how much force she put into trying to free herself. Left without any other options, her sisters and Leo tailed after them, chasing through the city in a mad dash of confusion and fear.

"It was Wyatt...wasn't it?" Piper demanded between breaths, focusing on what she could see of Chris' face. "The one who...destroyed them."

His expression remained unchanged at her question, but the hand clamped around her own flinched at her words. They ran in silence for a few minutes, dodging craters in the streets and leaping over fallen debris, and then Chris darted suddenly into a shadowed alleyway. She skidded to a halt next to him, and then glanced up at his face while attempting to catch her breath. She could just barely make out the edge of his eyes glittering in the darkness, directly focused on her.

"Yes," he murmured softly, regret lacing his voice in the stillness as he finally released her hand. "It was him."

Phoebe, Paige, and Leo all zoomed around the corner, clattering to a stop. Her sisters doubled over, bracing themselves with hands on their knees and panting from their extended run. Piper surveyed what she could see of the ruined city from where they were hiding, and believed in her heart for the first time that Chris was telling the truth about her little boy. Her eyes filled with tears at the thought of all the people who had lost their homes, of the children who had lost fathers and mothers when her son destroyed all of the governments in the world, abolishing their armies and defenses with his powerful inheritance.

"How many?" Piper whispered, focusing her gaze back on their whitelighter.

Her sisters glanced up at her in confusion, still heaving labored breaths. Leo, who had been guarding the entrance to the alley and keeping watch for pursuing demons or probes, turned his head at the sorrow contained within her voice.

Chris somehow seemed to completely understand the thoughts and meaning behind her short question, despite the lack of explanation. "Wyatt's Regime is filled with thousands of demons, warlocks, and darklighters; even some witches. Everyone who refused to join was...eliminated. The number is uncountable."

Piper's eyes fluttered shut, a single tear leaking out of one eyelid and coursing down her cheek. Chris hesitated at the sight, his hardened expression softening slightly. "...I'm sorry."

"What about my other child?" she asked, visibly pushing away her sorrow and focusing on their reason for casting the spell in the first place.

"I can't-"

"We have a few tails," Leo interrupted suddenly.

Chris' head snapped up at the words. "How many?"

"Looks like three...but there may be more hidden nearby."

The witchlighter made a soft noise of frustration and moved to join Leo at the opening of the alley. "We need to lose them."

"Why can't we just go Up There?" Phoebe demanded.

"Or hide in Magic School?" Paige suggested.

"The heavens were ransacked in Wyatt's bid for power. Magic School was one of the first things to go after that," Chris responded distractedly, his eyes focused around the corner.

The sisters looked at each other helplessly, each of them wondering how everything could have gone so wrong in such a short time. Leo eyed Piper sadly, desperately wishing to offer her comfort, but afraid of how it might be received.

"Stay here," Chris ordered in a hushed voice. Their heads whipped up in time to see him edge around the walls of the alley, stealthily moving through the shadows and disappearing from view.

Leo frowned as they lost sight of the young man. "I don't like this."

"What else are we supposed to do?" Paige said quietly, grimacing. "We have no idea what's out there."

Piper drew herself up to full height, some of her usual fiery spirit reappearing in her eyes. "That's never stopped us before."

"That's right." Phoebe nodded. "We're the Charmed Ones - as long as we're together, we'll be okay."

They exchanged grim smiles of determination, then peered out of the alley together. The open road they had come from seemed deserted, no probes or demons in sight. Each of the sisters glanced at each other with raised eyebrows, then turned to Leo.

"How did you know we were being tailed?" Paige whispered.

Leo's eyebrows furrowed. "Because I could see three demons-"

He broke off and dived out of the way as a fireball shot towards him from above. The sisters looked up to see a grinning demon standing on the crumbling remains of a roof above them, holding more fireballs in each hand.

"What do we have here?" the demon sneered. "A few lost-"

The demon exploded brilliantly in a shower of sparks, cutting off the words. Piper smirked up at where he'd been standing, flexing her fingers smugly. "Well, that's one down."

"Ten to go," a guttural voice resounded gleefully from behind her. Piper whirled around with her hands outstretched and ready to explode, but the demon merely grinned at her as she caught sight of the multitude that had surrounded them while their attention was focused above.

"Well now," he continued, rows of serrated teeth gleaming at them as he smiled. "Lord Wyatt will be _very_ interested to know that his family is here to see him."

The sisters and Leo crowded together, forming a circle with their backs to each other and readying themselves for battle. Many of the demons surrounding them cackled at the sight, certain of their own victory. Piper grimaced, mentally reviewing their available weapons - her explosive power, Paige's orbing, and Phoebe's martial arts training. No potions, athames, or crystals.

 _Whatever you're planning, Chris, do it fast!,_ she thought frantically.

Strangely, he seemed to hear her plea. Shards of metal and wood flew towards the demons, seemingly from out of nowhere, embedding within flesh and eyes before the demons could react. Many of them howled in agony, clutching at their bleeding eyes or shoulders. Three dissolved into ash, staring down in surprise at the large shards piercing through their chests. Piper seized hold of the opportunity the witchlighter had given them, swiftly exploding two more of the demons before they could recover, focusing on the least wounded ones she could see. Her sisters jumped into the fray as well, lashing out with elbows and kicks at the demons closest to them.

The leader of the pack let out a guttural snarl of rage, and leapt at Piper with claws extended. Leo cried out a wordless warning as he turned towards her, one hand outstretched as if to push her out of the way.

But Chris was faster, diving into the fray from the shadows with a lethal athame clutched in hand. He swiped at the demon, aiming up from underneath the extended claws, slicing its throat open ruthlessly without a shred of hesitation. Seizing hold of the momentum, Chris continued the motion and turned his body sideways as blood sprayed over his clothes, thrusting up his left leg and kicking the bleeding body mid-leap so that it slammed into one of the blinded demons stumbling around, sending them sprawling. As his body whirled around from his lunge, the whitelighter flung out his arm and telekinetically aimed the athame at one of the demons ganging up on Paige. It burst into flames with a gurgling scream.

"Athame!" she ordered, swinging her hand forward. The athame stopped mid-fall as orbs surrounded it, flinging it into the chest of the other demon that had been attacking her. The horned creature convulsed and then burst spectacularly into a rain of ash.

Phoebe dodged another blow from the demon that she'd been fighting, then hurtled toward the athame that had fallen and snatched it up as she straightened from her defensive crouch. She flung the athame wildly at her attacker, but only managed to slice an ear. Enraged, the demon roared wordlessly at her and charged.

Chris caught sight of the charge out of the corner of his eye, thrust out his left hand and then jerked it sideways with a grunt of exertion. The demon that he had blinded earlier flew through the air wildly, flailing and howling in confusion, and then collided with the charging demon, knocking them both to the ground. The witchlighter spread both hands out with palms facing downward, exhaling softly, and then he flipped his hands over and thrust them upwards at a diagonal angle. The metallic shards and wooden debris he'd used as an earlier weapon darted up into the air like birds, and then zoomed towards the two demons still struggling to untangle themselves from their sprawled heap. They seized up as the projectiles connected with their bodies, and then burst into flame and smoke.

The sisters stood still for a moment, their eyes sweeping over the alleyway as if reliving the carnage. They shared a look of surprise and awe, then stared at their blood and dirt-covered whitelighter.

 _"Woah,"_ Paige commented softly. "He packs a punch."

"Yes," Leo remarked, his eyes blazing with distrust. "He does."

Chris wasn't listening, however. He walked forward to stare impassively down at the leader of the demons, who was still bleeding and twitching on the ground. The demon grinned maniacally up at him, blood coating his jagged shark teeth. He coughed out a gurgling laugh and then spat blood at the man's feet.

"He...will...find...you..." the demon rasped, coughing and spluttering as he cackled. Chris stared at the creature for a moment, dispassionately watching it laugh at him, and then he held up one hand and tightly clutched it into a fist. The demon tensed, one claw flying up to clutch wildly at his chest, and then went slack as his heart gave out. The body dissolved slowly into ash, leaving only a bloody smear on the ground after its vanquish.

The whitelighter inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. He held the breath for a brief second, and then slowly blew it out, his shoulders slumping slightly as he relaxed.

"Anyone injured?" he inquired softly, turning to look at the four of them with the same blank expression he'd regarded the dying demon with. Phoebe shivered a little at the look on his face, wondering how many deaths the man could have seen to make him so seemingly unaffected by them.

"I'm fine," Paige volunteered quietly. Phoebe and Piper both nodded their agreement.

"Thank you," Piper said after a moment of silence, regarding the witch seriously. "For saving us."

His eyes widened ever so slightly, a clear indicator that she'd surprised him, but then he gave a small smile and nodded. "You're welcome."

Leo crossed his arms, glaring grudgingly at the witchlighter. "So what now?"

"Now," Chris announced, raising an eyebrow. "We go to the only safe place left."

 

* * *

 

He led them through the ruins of San Francisco, setting a slower pace now that their demonic pursuers were all dead. The four travelers from the past followed after him quietly, looking around at the wreck of their home with despair in their hearts. None of them dared to ask how the city had become such a dilapidated shadow of the vibrant bustling city from their time.

After a half hour of their solemn procession, Chris finally stopped in front of the ruined husk of a parking deck on the eastern side of the city. He cast his eyes around for a moment, and then moved over to a crumbling wall that had clearly seen better days. They followed silently, crowding behind him in a semicircle as he gazed at a strange carving on the wall. It looked vaguely like a roaring fire.

"We are raw," Chris intoned lowly, sounding wholly unlike himself. "The flame inside us will never die."

"What-" the sisters had just enough time to question before the carved symbol on the wall glowed red with sudden heat. The fiery crimson spread outward from the symbol in all directions, fracturing the concrete like a shattering pane of glass before finally fading away altogether with a strange lack of sound or light.

Their ears popped in the sudden magical pressure, and suddenly they were staring at a large open archway designed in the smooth shape of a candle's flame. The crumbling wall had vanished entirely as if it had never been there in the first place. Stunned into silence, the sisters and Leo could only watch mutely as Chris stepped through the archway without an ounce of hesitation, through which they could just barely make out the unadorned walls and floor of a large room.

Chris turned, and his hard eyes stared at the four of them as if daring them not to follow. His tall frame seemed smudged somehow, as if they were peering at him through a dirty mirror or a portal to another world. Piper swallowed, shared an apprehensive glance with her sisters, and then walked forward through the opening to join their mysterious whitelighter. Her sisters followed quickly, with Leo cautiously bringing up the rear.

The archway hummed softly as the last of them passed underway, and they turned as one to watch the opening glaze over like a sheen of fog before finally solidifying into an unbroken wall. Only the fiery symbol marked where they had come from.

"Welcome," declared Chris. "To the Resistance."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like my work, please consider [buying me a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/cassavey)


	3. The Resistance

_"Where there is power, there is resistance."_

_\- Michel Foucault_

 

* * *

 

"The Resistance?" Phoebe repeated in surprise, thinking back to the ruined city they'd traveled through and its distinct absence of life. "Resistance against _what_?"

The low hum of noise and chatter from the people gathered inside the large room they had stepped into suddenly splintered at her words and dropped into complete silence. All eyes focused upon them intensely.

In the sudden ringing stillness, Chris turned his eyes to them as well and said simply: "Wyatt."

All around the enclosed space, people slowly filtered inside through multiple open doorways, filing in silently one after the other - men, women, children, dwarves and centaurs and leprechauns and all manner of magical folk. The spacious room quickly filled up with a multitude of humanoids, all encircling the newcomers in a half-moon along the walls, an unbroken guard barring entry into their refuge. Every face stared at them solemnly, warily judging whether they were worthy to set foot into their home.

Unnerved by all the eyes suddenly focused upon them and still on edge from the attack during their journey, Piper's hands slowly raised up, her fingers relaxed but ready for action at a moment's notice. Several people along the outskirts of the room tensed in expectation.

"There's no need for that, Piper," Chris murmured softly, reaching up and gently lowering her hands with his own before addressing the room at large. "Codename Falcon, password phrase: 'Bent, but never broken.'"

With this strange announcement, the tension in the room abruptly abated. Several of the gathered members broke out into huge grins or whooped with joy. Shouts erupted and spread like wildfire through the building - calls of "It's Chris!" and "Chris is back!" and "He's alive!" echoed through the halls. Leo looked over at the sisters with raised eyebrows, their faces mirroring his own in response. After over a year of dislike and arguments, it was somewhat startling to see so many people who genuinely liked the time-traveler, when most of the time they found him so aggravating.

"Chris! You son of a witch, what the hell took you so long?" a brazen voice demanded loudly from across the room. A dark-skinned woman with wild hair and a lithe, scarred figure shoved her way through the throng and stalked over to the newcomers. The sisters stared at her in unison, surprise registering on their faces as they recognized the tribal attire of the Valkyries.

A wry grin broke across Chris' face, startling those from the past who were used to scowls and glares. "Erica. Nice to see you too."

"Don't gimme that smirk! You've been gone for an entire year, what the hell were we supposed to think?"

Chris opened his mouth to answer the accusation, but her brown eyes suddenly sharpened and honed in on the four people hovering nervously behind the witch. Her relieved and welcoming expression swiftly darkened like a gathering storm. "Those people better not be who I think they are."

"They are," he sighed. When she directed an incredulous look at him, he crossed his arms defensively. "And don't look at me like that Eri, it wasn't _my_ bright idea."

"Hey!" Phoebe protested indignantly.

"Chris, this is _dangerous_. They can't be here!" Erica declared, ignoring the sisters entirely.

"Where else are they supposed to go?" he snorted derisively, a hint of laughter in his tone. "The streets? The manor? Oh! I know, let's just deliver them straight to the Regime's front door and watch what happens when the timeline catches up. It'll be fun!"

"Of course not!" she said, exasperated. "But they can't be here Chris, and you know it! Send them _back_."

"And how the hell am I supposed to do that?" he snapped, the playful smirk finally morphing into an irritable frown at the continued verbal assault. "Just getting me through the portal the first time was nearly impossible. The second time-"

He broke off abruptly, jaw clenching in restraint as he visibly swallowed the words he'd been about to say. The harsh lines around Erica's eyes softened slightly, the silence stretching between them, and then she thrust a hand onto her hip and frowned uncomfortably in the direction of Chris' shoulder. She seemed thoroughly unconcerned by the dark blood coating his shirt, as if it were a regular sight she was quite used to.

"I heard," she replied shortly. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. She was a great asset to the Resistance. Good woman. Hell of a fighter, too."

Chris' jaw twitched minutely, but he gave a sharp nod to indicate his acceptance of the offered sympathy.

Despite the obvious tension building between the two acquaintances, Piper tentatively stepped forward to interject herself into the conversation. "Someone mind filling us in here?"

This attempt at breaking the proverbial ice was met with only a hostile stare from the Valkyrie, her eyebrows raised in condescension.

"Piper," Chris drawled wryly. "Meet Erica, last of the Valkyries and the resident general of the battle troops here at the Resistance. Erica, meet Piper Halliwell, eldest Charmed-"

"I know who the hell she is," the battle-worn woman snapped irritably. Piper scowled in response. "What I want to know is what she's doing here in 2026."

Chris raised a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, as if to ward off an impending headache. "The sisters-"

"We cast a spell," Paige interrupted, ignoring the brief eye-roll he aimed in her direction. "To see into the future."

"And it backfired spectacularly...just like I said it would," Chris reminded her, looking entirely too smug at stating this fact. She shot him a scathing smile, which only succeeded in widening his smirk. Paige briefly entertained the thought of smacking that self-satisfied expression right off his face, but then she remembered the way he'd fought tooth and nail to protect them out in the city. Her irritation dissolved quickly.

"So you ended up here how, exactly?" inquired Erica, shifting towards the outsiders to acknowledge them for the first time. Her stance remained aggressive despite the invitation to talk, like a chained attack dog that wasn't quite sure whether to endure your presence or rip your limbs off.

Leo cautiously stepped forward to answer. "The spell was supposed to create a viewing portal to see into the future without interacting with it, but instead it dragged us forward in time. We remained in the manor during the time shift, and Chris...brought us here, once he realized where we'd ended up."

The three sisters looked at him incredulously, then shared a glance that clearly stated their opinion of him glossing over their harrowing flight through the city. Erica's gaze shifted to the bloodstains on Chris' clothing and the disheveled appearances of the sisters, but merely raised an eyebrow at the missing information.

"Brilliant," she said sweetly with a mocking smile, then turned back towards the witchlighter. "So how are we getting them back?"

Chris' shoulders slumped slightly in weariness. "I don't know yet. Give me a few hours to think of something."

"No," Piper snapped, her expression hardening as she remembered their whitelighter's earlier evasion. Regardless of the way he'd fought for them, there were still many things about the witchlighter that she did _not_ approve of - namely, the way he refused to tell them anything that could help them change this monstrous future. "Not until you tell me where the hell my child is."

"Remember that little conversation we had about Wyatt's Regime?" Chris replied brightly, as if speaking to an especially slow child. "Even if you _could_ get past the demons guarding his castle, do you really think he would invite you in for a chat and a cup of tea?"

Pain lanced through her heart at the reminder of the monster her cheerful, innocent baby boy would become. But she bit her bottom lip and forced herself to move past it, to think of her second-born, who was the reason they created this mess to begin with. "Not Wyatt. I want to know where my other child is."

Chris' face abruptly shut down, clearing of all emotion and becoming a shuttered mask, revealing nothing. Erica, on the other hand, looked as though the words had developed physical manifestations and slapped her right across the face. Despite her apparent desire to interact with the Charmed Ones as little as possible, she made no attempt to hide her reaction to this proclamation and stared directly at the four of them in complete dismay, her mouth hanging open comically. And though they previously hadn't been watching for reactions from the other people gathered within the room, suddenly the sisters couldn't help but notice that every person near enough to hear the question had begun to whisper amongst themselves, exchanging bewildered glances tinged with alarm.

"You...you don't kno-" Erica began to stammer, but cut off her words as Chris gestured sharply with one arm. Her eyebrows climbed high in response, but then she too attempted to clear her face of emotion before turning back towards the eldest Halliwell.

"Don't know what?" Piper ground out through clenched teeth. When Erica didn't respond fast enough for her liking, the irate mother turned on her witchlighter with a hostile expression that demanded answers. Now. "What are you hiding? Where is my child?"

The slightest twitch of a muscle in his jaw was her only response, and her heart sank.

"They can't be...dead?" she whispered, voice hitching in fear as she looked between the two resistance fighters. Even though their whitelighter had denied this earlier, there was always a chance that he'd lied, after all.

"No," Chris responded immediately to ease her panic, then pressed his lips together in a thin line, clearly berating himself for answering at all. Her heart lightened slightly, but then she thought of another possibility, and despaired.

"Oh please... _please_...don't tell me they're just like Wyatt," she whispered, heartsick. Something in Chris' expression softened at her despairing words, but before he could even open his mouth to respond, an outraged voice rang across the room.

"Of course not, he's the founder of the Resistance!"

The soft expression on Chris' face morphed instantly into disbelieving fury. Piper's head whipped around to search for the owner of the voice, but not before he bellowed in response: _"Shut up!"_

"The founder?" Leo echoed behind her, voice heavy with mingled joy, pride, and relief.

"He?" Phoebe repeated, astonishment clouding her soft words.

Paige groaned theatrically. "You have _another_ boy?"

The teenage man who had spoken out of the throng ignored their words, instead smiling sheepishly in Chris' direction. He looked highly embarrassed to be the sudden center of attention.

"Can I see him?" Piper exclaimed hopefully, joy lighting her features at the thought that her second child ( _son!_ ) would not only be safe, but was _good_ \- fighting against the evil that had overtaken her firstborn. It eased her fear that she had been a horrible mother, that somehow - despite all intents to raise her children properly - she might have become the inadvertent cause of Wyatt's spiral into madness, the source of this battered and broken world that was to be their future someday.

"NO," Chris snarled, and then turned to address the entire room before Piper could quite process the depth of her outrage. "And none of you are allowed to tell the Charmed Ones or Leo anything about this future whatsoever. Do I make myself clear?"

"You have no right to do that!" Leo proclaimed, completely incensed.

"Watch me!" the witchlighter snapped in response without even turning to look at him, then repeated himself authoritatively to the throng. _"Do I make myself clear?"_

"Yes, sir!" the gathered fighters immediately replied, unanimous in their support.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" the Elder bellowed in fury.

"The one trying to save your son!" Chris snarled, lips drawing back over his teeth like an enraged dog.

"HEY!" barked Piper, throwing herself bodily between the two men with her hands outstretched. "That's enough!"

The two men scowled simultaneously, glowering at each other over her head. Piper turned towards her ex-husband and shoved a finger in his face.

"You! _Cool it._ And you!" she whirled on Chris, who drew himself up to his full height to avoid the finger suddenly invading his personal space. "Explain yourself. NOW."

"I can't tell you," he responded smoothly, unruffled by her threatening tone.

"That is getting _so_ old," Paige complained to Phoebe. Her sister grimaced in response.

Erica, who had so far been simply admiring the heated exchange from a safe distance, stepped forward to re-insert herself in the conversation. "You can't see your son because he is currently on an extended mission."

Both Piper's and Chris' eyes snapped over to the rugged woman, focusing on her with vastly different expressions, but equal amounts of intensity. Her lips quirked in amusement at the similarities between the two witches (because really, how did they _not_ see it?), but she hastily smothered her reaction before continuing. "He won't be coming back for quite some time. And even when he does, he will probably leave again just as quickly."

"But why?" Phoebe questioned in confusion. "If he's the leader, shouldn't he be here to...well, lead?"

"He's not the leader, only the founder," Chris interjected smoothly, his previously agitated features smoothing into their usual composed manner. "He left me, Erica, and the rest of the Council in charge."

"He was never really enthusiastic about leading," Erica replied with obvious relish, a smirk curling one end of her lips as she saw Chris twitch out of the corner of her eye. "Prefers to strategize, for the most part. He's a little too stubborn and hot-headed to be a good leader. He gets it from his family."

Chris scowled at her, his eyes promising payback for the words. Erica grinned fiercely in response.

"I don't understand," Phoebe interrupted suddenly, her eyebrows furrowed in thought. "If Piper's son is alive and, well, _good_...why didn't he come back to warn us about Wyatt?"

"Yeah, why Chris?" agreed Leo darkly.

"Better yet, why not one of us?" Paige demanded. "Not that we're not grateful, but why did it have to be Chris?"

"Because _Chris_ ," hissed the witchlighter furiously, "Was the only one willing to try to _save_ your son instead of slitting his throat at the first opportunity."

The color instantly drained from each of the time-travelers' faces.

"Wh- what..." Phoebe and Paige spluttered together.

"How _dare_ you," Piper snarled. "How dare you stand there and-"

"Look around you!" Chris exploded, throwing an arm out to encompass the ragtag group of creatures in the room as he shouted. "Haven't you realized yet? You are all _dead_. The Elders are _dead._ The Cleaners are _dead_. Good has _lost._ Demons are running the streets, and we are the only thing that stands between your son and his reign over _everything_! I'm the one who came back because I was the only one that didn't want to see Wyatt murdered for what he's done!"

Overwhelmed by the horrible future they had landed themselves in, overcome by the knowledge that everything was broken because her family had failed (because _she_ had failed), desperately wishing the horrible words and implied accusations would end, Piper lost herself to the emotions churning within her and lashed out at the source of it all.

"Piper, no...!" her sisters cried in horror as she flung her hands forward.

But Chris was somehow ready for her reaction and, faster than they had ever seen him move, threw his hands up in a rough gesture that ripped a chunk from the floor beneath them and levitated it in front of his chest just in time to absorb the molecular explosion Piper had directed at him. The rock burst into glittering dust and slowly fluttered to the floor in the sudden dead silence of the room.

The gathered crowd of resistance fighters surged forward in outrage, many of them lifting hands or weapons in retaliation, but a telekinetically enhanced swipe of Chris' arm flattened them all back against the walls of the room once more. Leo's eyes widened at the sudden display of powerful magic, half-formed suspicions and paranoia erupting within his mind once more.

"C-Chris..." Piper stammered in horror, her eyes wide. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."

She trailed off forlornly at the sight of his shuttered, blank expression. Only his flashing jade eyes revealed his fury and, oddly enough, disappointment - as if she had failed some unnamed test or standard that he'd been secretly measuring her against.

Silence stretched between the gathered time-travelers while Erica stood stiffly off to one side, clearly wanting to get involved but not daring to place herself in the line of fire.

"What time is it?" Chris asked suddenly, his voice carefully constructed into a semblance of calm. Erica assumed he was speaking to her, though he had yet to actually look at her since the argument between the time-travelers escalated.

She eyed him warily. "Almost time for the evening broadcast."

"Show them."

Erica blinked, certain she'd heard wrong. "But-"

"Show. Them."

At the hard words forced out between his gritted teeth, Erica sighed and obediently moved towards a narrow doorway. Chris glowered at the four visitors from the past silently for several moments, before stating softly: "If you want your _precious_ answers, follow her."

With those words delivered, Chris abruptly whirled around and stalked off in the opposite direction from where Erica had exited the room. As he approached the quiet bystanders gathered to witness the unfolding drama, he barked impatiently: "Don't you all have things to do?"

Everyone in the room scattered instantly, hastily attempting to escape the witchlighter's incurred wrath.

Piper gazed at her sisters sadly, obvious shame reflected on her face. "I...I didn't really want to hurt him, I just..."

They smiled sadly at her, quickly offering a comforting brush of their hands on her arm.

"We know, sweetie," Phoebe murmured. Piper's gaze traveled back to where their whitelighter had stomped away, staring sorrowfully at the empty doorway.

"Well..." Paige suggested with attempted cheer. "Let's go get those answers, shall we?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Note:** The falcon, in symbology, is a solar emblem of success, victory, and rising above a dark situation. In animal totem mythology, it is a symbol of intellect, cunning, calculation, strategy, fierce determination, single-minded focus/drive for accomplishing one goal, and the fight for freedom. The Peregrine Falcon's Latin name, Falco Peregrinus, means 'foreigner' or 'stranger', because it is a migratory bird that tends to travel great distances. I chose Chris' code name on a whim at first, because it just seemed _right_ to me; after researching the origins of the word, I'm even more happy with this choice.
> 
> \-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> If you like my work, please consider [buying me a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/cassavey)


	4. The Evening Raid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger Warning:** This chapter briefly describes a massacre.

" _We're all see-through, just like glass_

_And we can shatter just as fast."_

_\- Thousand Foot Krutch, "Be Somebody"_

 

* * *

 

Minutes later, the four of them desperately wished they had never asked any questions at all.

They stared, horrified and transfixed, at the wide digital screen projected on the wall in front of them, stretching from floor to ceiling in a larger-than-life sized display. None of them were quite sure where the sound was coming from, but all fervently wished that it would turn off and never come back on ever again.

When they had first entered the room, shaken but hopefully cheerful at the prospect of learning more about the future, Erica had offered them only an ugly, condescending smile. Before they could think of something to say, she had stretched out a hand to mess with a strange panel on the wall, activating a giant screen that seemed to be made up entirely of light particles. Paige had squealed softly in interest at the future technology, but the razor-edged smile Erica was still directing at them quickly squashed her excitement.

"Enjoy," the woman said brightly, still giving them that cruel smile, before walking to the back of the room and leaning casually against the wall. All amusement wiped from her face as the digital display lit up with the scheduled program, however.

Piper had just enough time to wonder who on earth would still be watching TV in this half-destroyed city, before a black and red-skinned demon appeared on the screen and her hands instinctively rose up to protect her family. Leo's warm hand covered one of her own, and her heart warmed as she took strength from the comforting contact.

" _Good evening, everyone,"_ the demon drawled with obvious amusement. _"Once again it is time for your favorite program, The Evening. Today we have the distinct and utmost pleasure of welcoming our most esteemed guest, Lord Wyatt-"_

The sisters gasped in unison, clutching each other in a vain attempt to gain strength from the physical contact as the camera swerved slightly to the left, revealing an army of demons. And directly in the center of the malformed creatures, a tall man with a muscular figure stood with all the grace and ease of someone who took great pride in the knowledge of their own strength and power. His easy-going expression and warm smile contrasted sharply with the black battle gear he wore, blonde curls cascading gently down to his wide shoulders.

"Wyatt-!" Piper gasped, one hand flying to her mouth in horror at the sight of all the demons crowding her adult son. Her heart beat frantically against her chest as panic spread under her skin. _What are they going to do to_ -

But the thought abruptly fractured and shattered as she remembered that her son was in no danger at all. In fact, he appeared quite content in the surrounding army and was smiling widely now that he had seen the camera focused upon him. He raised a hand and beckoned the demonic reporter (and wasn't _that_ a strange and entirely laughable thought?) over to himself, blue eyes revealing his obvious delight. The demon hastily approached, but stopped within an arms' length of the man - clearly unwilling to get close to the Halliwell.

" _Lord Wyatt, good evening."_ The demon bowed respectfully, and fearfully, in the blonde's direction, careful to keep his eyes diverted from the man's in a show of deference. _"Thank you for the opportunity to witness and film this event."_

The satisfied smile widened on Wyatt's face. _"Have you informed our viewers of tonight's...agenda?"_

" _No, of course not. That pleasure is all yours, my king."_

Wyatt chuckled in pleased amusement at this statement, the lines around his eyes crinkling merrily.

The sisters exchanged confused glances with each other, their faces mirroring their bewilderment. Wyatt seemed rather friendly, almost...pleasant. If they overlooked the fact that he was speaking to a demon, a creature of evil, it almost appeared as though the baby boy grew up into a cheerful and easy-going sort of man.

Leo frowned at the large image of his son's face on the screen. "He seems...so..."

"Normal?" Paige supplied, bemused.

"Friendly?" Phoebe hopefully added.

A dark snort resounded behind them from the Valkyrie, but Piper chose to ignore the sound in light of seeing her son alive and seemingly...not _good_ , certainly, if he was pleasantly chatting with demons like this on a daily basis, but still not the murdering tyrant that Chris had always seemed to refer to when speaking of this dark future. Leo squeezed her hand in a quiet show of support and strength; she offered a tremulous smile in his direction before turning back as Wyatt began to speak once more.

" _Excellent. In that case, I would like to extend a warm invitation to the Resistance..."_

The pleasant smile on Wyatt's face widened, his eyes darkening with merciless delight while continuing his cheerful monologue. _"...to watch as I introduce myself to their friends in Safehouse 9."_

Behind them, Erica released a strangled sound of alarm, and then bolted from the room. Phoebe turned at the Valkyrie's panicked departure, catching the briefest glimpse of the dark-skinned woman before she disappeared through the open doorway, leaving behind only an echo of the terror she'd felt. Suddenly unsure of their initial assessment about Wyatt's seeming pleasantness, Phoebe glanced over at her family as a curling sense of dread coiled inside her abdomen. Piper and Leo's eyes were completely riveted to the screen, but Paige shared a nervous glance with her sister, apparently feeling the same foreboding sense of impending doom. Neither of them were quite sure what exactly was going on, but neither of them were sure they ever wanted to know.

On the screen, Wyatt smiled for a few moments more, and then casually whirled around to walk towards a dilapidated building that appeared as though it had been abandoned for years. He nonchalantly extended his right hand to the side, flexing it gently, and the form of a beautiful and deadly sharp blade slowly materialized within his palm.

"Excalibur!" Leo whispered softly, the hand clutching Piper's own twitching in surprise.

"What," Paige laughed sardonically. It sounded forced even to her own ears. "Does he intend to bring down that abandoned building with a sword?"

As if in response to her question, Wyatt's left hand slowly raised up, fingers extended. There was a silent pause, then his fingers contracted and tensed as if grabbing a struggling bird, and he _ripped_ the air in front of the building asunder with a forceful downward sweep of his arm, tearing through the shimmering glamor as though it were tissue paper. The magic splintered and frayed in the air, visible cracks spidering outward across the entire view of the building, before finally shattering like glass and revealing the true building that stood before him. A wailing siren blared faintly from within, and the camera swiveled just enough to get a glimpse of Wyatt's sharp, cruel smile and blazing eyes. He raised his left hand once more, shifted his fingers just so, and the barred door of the building imploded in a spray of fractured magic and dust.

" _Go."_

The demon horde that had been anxiously waiting off-screen let out howls and growls of excitement at the word, a grating sound of bloodlust that rose the hair on the backs of the time-travelers' necks as they watched in horrified fascination. All of the demons surged forward, like a pack of starving hounds released after an escaping fox, and they broke through the jagged opening of the building in a wave of horns, knives, and claws. Behind them, Wyatt slowly and deliberately walked forward, a casual march of pride designed to show just how certain he was of his own invulnerability and impending victory.

The first bloodcurdling scream made them flinch. The second wail of animalistic terror caused a shudder to run through their frames. But when the screams were joined by a third, a fourth, a fifth, uncountable numbers of rising wails and screams that broke off into gurgles or unthinkable silence, the four people watching the screen could only tremble in horror. Unable to look away, too shocked to cry, they all stared as one of their very own joined the carnage on the screen and, instead of helping or _doing_ something to stop this madness, moved fluidly throughout the scrambling people within the building and through its underground floors, reaping death wherever he went.

A witch with crackling flames whirling in her hands, choked to death by a telekinetic fist. A fair-haired centaur with a resounding battle roar, impaled on the end of Excalibur halfway through a bounding leap. A round-faced child that wailed in the arms of his blankly staring mother, silenced with a telekinetic swipe of the hand that instantly twisted his small neck into an impossible angle. An old man that still had enough energy within him to take down five demons at once, thrown between floor and ceiling repeatedly until there was more blood than skin visible on his elderly frame. On and on, men and women and children and magical creatures, slaughtered in various gruesome and merciless ways.

And throughout it all, Wyatt's wide smile never wavered.

Piper sank to the floor, moaning softly as she clutched her stomach. Her eyes stared unblinkingly at the massacre happening right before her eyes, powerless to stop or change their fates. Leo, somehow, remained standing - though he looked lost, and small, and terribly broken, curling in on himself as if he could somehow snatch his son right out of the screen and hold him back from ever becoming the monster they now witnessed. Paige and Phoebe had turned away, unable to bear the sight, clutching each other and sobbing openly like wounded children.

On the screen, the tyrant of the future stopped and turned towards them, smirking.

" _This is a message."_ Wyatt spoke softly, intimately, as if confiding a secret to an immensely close friend. _"I know you are here. I_ will _find you, and when I do..."_

His smirk widened into a cruel, sharp-edged grin. _"You will wish you had never betrayed me, Christopher."_

The maniacal face on the wall and the mutilated bodies seen behind his visage abruptly disappeared, along with the blazing light-screen.

"I'm sorry," a voice announced softly behind them. Phoebe and Paige's eyes bounced around the room wildly until they settled upon Chris, standing alone in the doorway, looking as though he had somehow aged ten years since they had last seen him. His green eyes touched upon each of them gently, and then landed on Piper's crumpled form as she sobbed - great, gasping sobs that wracked her entire body. Pain twisted Chris' features momentarily before being visibly shoved away as he brought himself under control once more. "I'm so sorry. I never meant for you to see...that. It's not normally like..."

The witchlighter trailed off, looking at where Wyatt's face had been on the wall with a forlorn and helplessly lost expression.

Leo stumbled around to face the man he had distrusted and mistreated for so long. His mouth opened, but only managed to produce a broken, cracked sound that splintered and died in the air. A shudder rippled through him, and then he simply buried his head in his hands.

"How?" Piper's heart-wrenching voice rang in the stillness as she gulped for air between her words. "What-...when-?"

Though this made no sense to either of her sisters, somehow Chris understood yet again. He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again there was raw grief there as he answered: "It was always there, under the surface...poisoning his mind. No one realized until it was too late."

Somehow, from within the depths of the despair resounding within her, Phoebe managed to produce words. "Where were we? Why...how could we..."

Chris flinched. After a moment, he whispered only: "I can't tell you that, Phoebe. The consequences for this future would-"

"Future-?" Paige exploded, anger twisting the tear tracks on her face into jagged lines. "There are consequences NOW! Didn't you come back to _change_ this- this-"

Finding no words deep enough or terrible enough to explain the enormity of what they had just witnessed, she broke off and lapsed into helpless, infuriated silence.

"Yes," Chris replied, ever so gently. "I went back to stop all of this. And I will."

He inhaled and then exhaled, slowly.

"But I cannot tell you everything you want to know."

As one, the sisters moved their heads to stare at him in utter disbelief.

"Why?" Piper whispered, too emotionally spent to scream it at him.

Chris' face twisted into an ugly smile. "Because telling you could make it even worse."

"What could possibly be worse than this!?" Phoebe shouted, filled with a righteous anger that sizzled under her skin and gave her energy, purpose. They could _stop_ this, they could _change_ this, if only they knew what to change! How could he stand there and _refuse_ to give them the answers to fix everything?!

Instead of yelling or defending himself, Chris simply laughed - long and hard, an unbearably ugly and bitter sound that echoed through the room. Unnerved, confused, horrified, they could only stare at him until he quieted, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"The first time I asked that question," he began softly. "My mother died protecting me, and bled to death in my arms while my father ignored my screaming. The next time I asked, Wyatt took over the world and killed anyone who resisted. The last time I asked, my only remaining family members were tortured to death in front of my eyes."

Haunted jade eyes dropped down to refocus upon the sisters, intense and hard. "I stopped asking."

No one spoke.

He sighed, visibly bringing his emotions under control and standing straighter. When his eyes found each of them once more, none of the turmoil they had glimpsed remained. "If I tell you all the bad things that will happen and when, the simple act of knowing them could change them - make them happen earlier, or make it worse than what originally happened. If I could tell you, I would. But you just _cannot_ know."

Before any of the ones from the past could think of what to say, Erica walked back into the room. Chris turned towards her with the same hard, focused expression - something that they were beginning to recognize as his soldier mode.

"We saved as many as we could," she announced bluntly.

"How many?"

"Roughly one fourth."

Chris sighed softly, the only audible acknowledgement of mourning he would allow himself. "Give me a rough headcount."

"About 1,000. Safehouse 9 was one of the smaller ones, established shortly after you left."

"I see. How many can be housed here?"

"We have 600 open rooms here, maybe 800 if we extend underground more. Safehouses 3, 4, 7, and 8 have more open spots, about 900 to 1,500 each. Safehouse 10's wards were close to being finished, which would have given us another 8,000, but we'll need to rethink what wards we use. Now that he's found 9, he'll be able to recognize the others more easily. The Council wants to know what you suggest."

"I can work on the wards. Go through the refugees and select the ones that have active powers we can use. Station them here and spread the rest out among the open houses. Keep families together at all costs."

The two leaders' conversation continued in this manner, calculated and professional, as though moving pieces on a chessboard. Phoebe and Paige shared a mournful glance, each of them thinking about the implications of what hadn't been said.

If 1,000 was only a fourth of the people at the building they had seen, then Wyatt had murdered at least 3,000 people in cold blood, in less than twenty minutes.

And no one seemed surprised at all.

 

* * *

 

Eventually, there was an extended pause in the leaders' refuge plans. Erica heaved an exhausted sigh in the sudden silence.

"How many rooms will they need?" the Valkyrie inquired, nodding over at the four emotionally spent time-travelers on the floor. Chris' eyes flickered over to them for the briefest moment.

"Two, maybe three at the most. Try to find rooms near mine."

She nodded. "Done."

The scarred woman turned to exit the room with a click of her boots on the floor. Phoebe and Paige followed her retreating form with their eyes before turning back to Chris, who had raised his eyes to the ceiling, as if praying for patience. He inhaled deeply and then sighed, before slowly turning towards them and approaching their crumpled forms. Bracing himself with one hand, the whitelighter quietly knelt on the stone beneath their feet.

"It's been a long day," he said gently, his eyes revealing the compassion he felt for them despite all of their fighting over the past year. "We can talk about everything tomorrow, but for now I think you should all go to bed. I promise I'll do my best to return all of us to the past as soon as possible."

A hand clutched wildly at the front of his shirt, tightly curling into the stained folds. His green eyes sharpened and focused on Piper's face, which was frozen in a hardened expression despite her blotchy eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

"We will stop this," she said fiercely. The hand clutching the witchlighter's shirt trembled, but her eyes never wavered from his own.

Chris reached up and closed his hand over her fist, meeting her gaze with the same steely resolve.

"Yes. We will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like my work, please consider [buying me a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/cassavey)


	5. The Highest Price

" _The end is where we begin,_

_Where broken hearts mend_

_and start to beat again."_

_\- Thousand Foot Krutch_

 

* * *

 

When Piper slowly became aware of her surroundings the next morning, it took her several long moments of blinking and staring blearily at the ceiling above her before she became truly aware of where, and when, she was.

She gazed at the stone above her, tracing the grooves and natural indents with her eyes as her brain attempted to absorb everything from the previous day. It seemed like a dream, a nightmare...something not quite real. Like the shadowy remembrance of the last dream your brain struggles out of in that moment between just waking and full consciousness. But there were no foggy outlines around the bodies that had fallen one after the other in front of her eyes, no dullness to the remembrance of the sharp scent of blood that had spurted out of the demon leader as Chris' blade raked across its torso, no mistaking the sting in her eyes from the previous day's whirlwind of terror, horror, guilt, and despair. When she closed her burning eyes, the image of her firstborn grinning at her with bloodied and broken bodies littering the ground behind him seared the darkness behind her retinas. Her throat ached from shouting and sobbing. Her legs ached from their frenzied escape through the city. Her hand ached from their whitelighter's bruising hold pulling her to safety.

Most of all, her heart ached.

How could this have happened? None of this would be a reality if she hadn't failed so clearly at raising Wyatt. Somehow, despite all of their intentions, something had happened along the way where she'd failed to protect him, where she'd failed in her duty as a parent to show him what was right and what was so very, very wrong.

_"Demons are running the streets, and we are the only thing that stands between your son and his reign over everything!"_

Piper gritted her teeth, refusing to keep crying like a broken-hearted teenager. _I won't fail this time. I will stop this, even if it kills me._

A knock at the door broke through her determined reverie, startling her into sitting up. Beside her, Leo's prone form stirred as his arm was unexpectedly jolted from its position on her torso, sliding down to rest in her lap. She stared at him in surprise, thoroughly flummoxed. The last thing she remembered was a blur of Chris leading them through endless stone halls, the silence broken only by their shuffling footsteps and quiet sniffles. How on earth had she ended up in the same room, let alone bed, as her ex husband?

The knock resounded again, louder this time. "Piper?"

She huffed a soft breath of annoyance at Phoebe's insistent voice coming through the door, and hastily scrambled out from under the thick quilt and heavy arm tangled around her, cringing across the cold stone floor in bare feet. It had been pleasantly warm outside even during their frightened escape, but clearly the springtime temperature did not transfer through the multiple underground floors of the Resistance's headquarters.

Piper cracked open the door gently, dancing from foot to foot as the cold quickly seeped up into her bones. Through the empty space between wood and stone, her disheveled sister paused in the process of knocking again, looking quite comical with her fist raised in the air, hair askew, and clothes from the previous day thoroughly rumpled from being worn for too many hours.

"What?" she demanded crossly, before Phoebe could say anything. Her sister made a face at her grumpy greeting but silently overlooked it, blessedly understanding woman that she was.

"Breakfast is being served right now. Chris came by to let us know that it will be closing down in thirty minutes, so if we want food we need to go soon."

"I also brought everyone some change of clothes," Chris announced from behind the middle sister, his voice clearly revealing exhaustion. Piper blinked in surprise and opened the door wider, peering through the crack and critically raking her eyes over their whitelighter. As soon as his eyes turned to her an odd emotion passed over his features, causing him to somehow look suddenly and inexplicably young, but then he averted his eyes and the emotion was gone as swiftly as it had appeared. He seemed wide awake and alert, but there was a slight paleness to his skin and a hint of purple beneath his eyes, clear indicators of someone who desperately needed rest.

"Have you slept at all?"

Chris blinked in alarm, his eyes widening just a fraction at her sudden unexpected interest in his well-being, though he continued to avoid her searching eyes. "Um. No?"

"Why not?"

"Because there were things I needed to do," he answered vaguely, shoving a small pile of folded clothes at her. "These are for you and Leo. You have five minutes."

He orbed away before she could respond, and she stared after his retreating orbs in outrage. Throwing her hands up in the air, she made a wordlessly infuriated noise deep in her throat. "What is his problem?"

Phoebe stared into the air where he'd been standing and hummed thoughtfully. "I dunno. He seemed sort of sad, almost...guilty, when he looked at you."

"I thought you couldn't feel anything from him?" Piper commented, eyeing her dubiously.

"I can't. I could just see it in his face."

"But..." Piper frowned. "Why would he..."

She trailed off, thinking back to the previous night, when he'd stood alone and broken in the doorway, apologizing for a massacre that he had every right to blame them for instead. She thought of the way his face had twisted with insurmountable grief when she'd asked about Wyatt, as if he mourned for the loss of her son's sanity rather than despising him as so many others did. She thought of the exceedingly gentle way he'd treated them, when they had shattered and were too lost to put themselves back together, and the way he'd vowed to save their world with every fiber of his soul poured into the words even after they'd screamed their rage at him.

Her indignation faded, replaced with a weary sorrow for the way she'd treated the man when he had always fought with everything he had to ensure her family's safety. Thinking back on some of his dubiously moral actions, the plots and manipulation that had so infuriated them, she felt suddenly that she could finally understand his driving need, his ruthless pursuit of achieving one goal at the cost of all else. Suddenly it made sense - all of the convoluted lies, twisted schemes, casually persuading arguments; if she had been in his place, enduring all the pain and horror of this terrible future brought on by just one little boy, she might have acted just as ruthlessly in order to save the endless victims of the future. What were four individuals' injured pride, after all, in the face of all this devastation?

She felt like a child.

How many times had she told him to get a life? To back off and let them have some normalcy, some time to themselves? How many times had she threatened him, yelled at him, for messing with their lives? How many demon vanquishes had she brushed off, callously telling him that she had better things to do with her time?

And all the while, he'd had the images of this ruined city in mind, recklessly pursuing a means to save countless millions without having to endure the loss of one child in trade.

She'd been such a fool. They'd all been fools.

Nursing their injured pride, refusing to accept the possibility that they could have let one demon slip through the cracks, they'd blocked off their hearts to his pleas, his desperation. Holding their title up like a banner, they'd shoved it in his face more times than she could remember - what was a single whitelighter to the _Charmed Ones?_ What were his measly hybrid powers in comparison to their Power of Three? And yet he was pushing himself to the limits, constantly, ever reaching towards an answer that could save fifty times the amount of innocents they'd ever rescued, let alone laid eyes on.

She wondered, suddenly, how he could have possibly endured their naïveté and childishness for so long.

"Piper?"

Startled, she jumped slightly and turned toward her sister, who'd been watching her with growing concern.

"Are...are you alright?"

Piper did not quite know how to answer that, honestly. So she said simply: "I'm fine."

Her sister's caring eyes darkened sadly and her mouth parted as if she intended to speak, but she let it go with a small smile and simply headed back to her and Paige's room. Piper sighed to herself wearily and slowly closed the door, bracing her hands against the rough surface in hopes of somehow claiming its quiet stability for her own frazzled emotions.

"Piper?"

She turned in surprise at Leo's gentle voice. Their conversation had clearly woken him, but he didn't seem agitated or sleepy; on the contrary, he looked rather like she felt - despairing, but determined not to let the circumstances break him.

"Hey," she responded softly. She didn't bother to attempt a smile, but moved forward to deposit the clothes in her arms onto the bed they'd shared (despite the extra bed nestled in the corner of the room, she noted absently). "Chris brought us some clothes. He says breakfast is being served right now, so we should hurry."

Leo eyed her silently, in that strange way he had of seeming to look straight through her. She turned away from his searching gaze to hunt down her shoes, but his hand caught her wrist and prevented her from moving farther. His thumb rubbed small, gentle circles over the skin on the inside of her wrist, causing her insides to flutter faintly.

"Are you alright?" he ventured softly, earnestly gazing up at her expression.

"Why does everyone keep asking me that?" she demanded - with a rather embarrassing crack in her voice that she was _not_ going to acknowledge. "Are _you?_ "

"No."

Piper blinked and paused at his unexpectedly blunt response, at a loss for what to say in reply. He smiled at her, but his crooked mouth belied only suffering and guilt rather than any joy or comfort.

"I just..." he floundered for words, glancing around wildly at their unfamiliar room as if searching for answers in the stones and strange furniture around them. "I don't..."

"...understand how it happened?" she finished softly. "How we could have failed him so badly that he would turn into...that?"

His eyes glistened up at her in the dim lighting of the room. "Yeah."

Swallowing the unwanted knot forming in her throat, Piper frowned and blinked fiercely to keep her traitorous eyes from generating more tears. "It doesn't matter."

Leo delivered a rather impressive look of disbelief at her, but she nodded decisively at him, once, and then twice, as if reassuring herself of her own words.

"It doesn't matter," she repeated firmly. "Because we are not going to let it happen."

He stared at her solemnly, eyes burning through the space between them and charging the air with all the unspoken things he didn't know how to say; speaking them anyway with the steady resolve in his gaze, reflecting her fierce determination to accomplish what they had failed to do once before.

"Okay," he said, breaking the silence between them with his soft voice.

She smiled in relief. "Okay."

They shared a quiet glance filled with warmth, and Piper briefly wondered how she'd ever thought that she could manage on her own without the other half of her soul.

"You know..." she began, hesitating. Her fingers curled desperately into the bedspread. "If- _when_...we get back...would you, maybe, consider-"

"Alright you guys, 5 minutes is up!" Phoebe's voice announced loudly at their door as she banged on it, obscenely cheerful.

Piper's voice dissolved into a wordless growl of frustration. She entertained a brief fantasy of opening the door, informing her sister of exactly where she could stick her cheerfulness, and then slamming it delightedly in her face; but she mastered the outlandish impulse and resigned herself to simply changing her clothes. Leo gave her a small rueful smile, and then reached for the clothes pile as well.

They changed in record time, distinctly aware of her sister's presence hovering impatiently outside the room, and then hastened out into the hall before she could get some ludicrous idea like neglecting their privacy and simply barging through the door.

The stone hall outside their door was empty and quiet, stretching out from their rooms on either side in a wide tunnel. Despite the stone ceiling hung low over their heads, it was carved in a gentle oval shape to give dwelling inhabitants the illusion of not being underground at all. Stationed in even intervals all along the wall were old-fashioned torches, like a medieval castle, but rather than fire the metalwork held simple glowing orbs that shone faintly blue, brilliantly illuminating the passageways yet somehow soft enough to be gentle on their eyes. The four time travelers turned to the left, and then to the right, surveying the empty halls with an expectant silence.

"Well...now what?" Piper muttered grumpily. "Does anyone remember which way we came from last night?"

"Of course not," Paige grunted, scowling sleepily at the floor. Her two sisters winced and resolved to locate coffee before actual food.

Leo glanced back at their doors, and then faced to their right, inclining his head slightly. "It feels like most of the people here are gathered in that direction."

"Then we'll go that way," Piper decided. Just as she stepped forward, however, a cheerful tinkling sound resembling bells echoed in the cavern, and a swirling mass of blue orbs coalesced into the form of Chris directly in front of them. As he reformed, he blinked owlishly at them for a few moments in surprise, as if he hadn't expected them to actually obey his five minute order. _Or_ , reflected Piper with no small amount of humor, _maybe he's simply surprised to see us looking so rumpled._

"Breakfast?" she prompted when the silence started to stretch.

"Showers?" added Phoebe.

"Coffee," Paige demanded, glowering at the whitelighter with none of her usual bubbly cheer.

The edges of Chris' mouth trembled in obvious amusement, though he ruthlessly suppressed the laugh that was clearly building in his throat. "I have bad news for you...there is no coffee."

Each sister stared at him, their expressions ranging from sheer disbelief to absolute outrage.

"That's impossible," declared Paige. "There _has_ to be coffee."

Chris affixed her with a mocking smirk. "You really think that with everything going on, we would care about small, silly luxuries?"

She glared at him with an expression that rather clearly stated what she thought of his definition for her favorite beverage, but his scornful look never faltered.

"You're going to have to get used to the way things are here," he informed them unsympathetically, his tone cool and matter-of-fact as if delivering simple, unavoidable facts. "We don't have the luxuries that you're used to. People here don't care about things like coffee or candy or their favorite meals- we're rather more concerned with being able to eat in the first place. You need to get used to not having the things that you've lived with all your lives and expect as a part of your day, and you need to get used to it _fast._ No one here is going to care if you want a break or a chance to have a normal life; most of us are just grateful to be alive at all, and even that is a luxury."

Both Phoebe and Paige suddenly looked wide-awake, and rather appalled at his words. Even Leo shared their sentiment, his eyes wide and slightly mutinous at the sudden condescending sneers directed their way.

Piper, however, continued to gaze calmly at Chris, her eyes steady and unwavering. "Right. So, breakfast?"

She experienced a moment of gleeful triumph at the faintly stunned look on his face, before he wiped his expression clean and nodded at her in a businesslike manner. But just before he turned around to lead them in the direction of the eating hall, Piper could have sworn she spied a fierce glint of approval in his eyes.

After following the witchlighter through various winding tunnels for five minutes, Phoebe finally tired of the slightly awkward silence.

"Sooooo," she began, drawing out the sound. Chris slanted an apprehensive glance in her direction and then cast his eyes back to where they were walking. "I know you can't tell us anything major, but...I was wondering if maybe you could answer some _teensy_ little questions?"

To their surprise, Chris barked out a sharp and deeply amused laugh, rather than dissolving into fury like he had the previous day. His emerald eyes glanced back at Phoebe again, warm and dancing with laughter. "You never change, Phoebe."

She smiled uncertainly, unsure of how to interpret his comment. Chris chuckled to himself, shaking his head fondly. "You can ask me whatever you want. There's no guarantee that I'll answer, but..." he trailed off thoughtfully, his expression introspective for a brief moment. "Seeing as you're already here and getting a first hand glimpse of the future for yourselves, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to explain the small details. But _only_ the small ones."

"Great!" Phoebe enthused in surprise, having expected complete refusal. "Um...um..."

She trailed off helplessly, seemingly unable to decide which of her million questions to ask first.

Seizing hold of the chance, Paige demanded imperiously, "Why is there no coffee?"

"Well, technically there _is_ coffee," Chris replied with obvious amusement. "If you want to march up to the Regime's front doors and demand that the demons give you some, that is."

The redhead frowned in disgust. "That sucks."

"Since when do demons drink coffee?" Piper couldn't resist asking.

"Since they became the dominant species on earth. Many demons find it amusing to make a mockery of the way people lived before- living in their houses, drinking their coffee, et cetera. That's why there are still television shows, actually. Demons think it's hilarious to twist what used to be the normal way of living, and it also provides a way for...the Regime to showcase how they do things to the rest of the world, in case any of the warlocks or demon armies get the bright idea to try and usurp their reign."

"You mean...Wyatt's reign, right?" Piper inquired softly.

He flinched, ever so slightly. If she hadn't had her eyes trained on his face avidly searching for a reaction, she would have never noticed.

"...yes."

Piper studied him for a moment as another awkward silence descended over the group, eyeing the hard planes of his face. It occurred to her suddenly that he was trying to protect them, that perhaps he always had been. Maybe the whole "future consequences" thing hadn't been so much about the laws of time-travel, though that was certainly a huge part of his secrecy to be sure, but maybe he'd been so flawlessly tight-lipped simply because he hadn't wanted to hurt them in the first place. When he'd first told them of his true mission, the one hidden behind his initial pretense of rescuing Paige and their Power of Three from the Titans, he had told them only that he wanted to save Wyatt, that something had happened to hurt him. And it was the truth, she mused, though only a small part of it. Perhaps he had kept the real truth about Wyatt from them, not for fear of their reactions or disbelief, but because he knew it would cut them to the core - one of their very own, twisted and tainted until he enjoyed slaughtering thousands. He had even apologized afterwards for hurting them, even after she had flung such cruel words in his face. And he had been horrified when he discovered what they'd seen on that strange light-screen...not because they'd seen something he didn't want them to, but because he had wanted to spare them from the terrible truth. Even now he was trying to keep Wyatt's name from his lips, as if to shield them from the root cause of all this devastation.

"You don't have to protect us, you know."

The words spilled from her mouth before the thought had even fully formed. She blinked in surprise, slightly embarrassed at the slip, but the sudden wide-eyed look Chris sent her way was worth it. He stared at her for a brief moment (as did her sisters and Leo, she noted) in wordless surprise, apparently in complete disbelief that she'd managed to instinctively figure out his inner motives, and then he blinked twice in succession and gave her a slow, sweet smile. It transformed his face and made him look years younger; the slightest twinge of familiarity sparked within her at the sight, though she definitely did not remember ever seeing him look at her like that before.

"I'll take it under consideration," he teased warmly, and then abruptly stopped in front of two enormous double-doors.

"This is the eating hall," he informed them, that strange note of startling warmth still present in his voice. "Meals are between seven and eight, noon and one, and seven and eight again. I'll keep showing you the way until you get used to it...though I'm hoping we won't be here long enough for that to happen."

He pushed open the doors with both hands after delivering this information, revealing a cavernous space large enough to fit at least ten of the building that housed P3, filled with people and magical beings of all sizes, far more than the group they'd seen the previous day, all eating and chatting avidly with each other. Long tables hewn from dark wood stretched across the hall, spaced apart in even rows on either side of the entrance-way they stood in, equally as long benches providing everyone a place to sit as they ate. The same torchlights interspersed throughout the hallways were used again inside the stone cavern, though in greater number to give residents more light to see their food and each other by.

At the sound of the doors opening, a few of the residents sitting nearest to the entryway glanced over in idle curiosity, and then performed rather amusing double-takes. Slowly their actions spread throughout the hall, boisterous conversations petering off into soft murmurings and then complete silence, as everyone's eyes turned towards the newcomers in wonder. The time-travelers tensed uncomfortably in the spotlight, but Chris turned to them as if nothing unusual had happened at all.

"Come on, I'll show you where you can get some breakfast," he announced casually, starting to walk in the direction of what appeared to be a stone bar. They hurried after him, uncomfortably aware of the enormous amount of eyes fixed upon them.

"We don't really have the traditional breakfasts you're used to, since chickens and other animals are a little hard to come by these days. Our meals are mainly made up of things that you can grow in the ground, since that's really all we have access to. There's an underground garden where we grow everything - I can show you that later..."

He continued to ramble casually into the silence at his normal speaking volume, oddly talkative for once. The travelers glanced at each other in momentary confusion, but soon noticed that their audience was gradually losing interest and beginning to eat and converse amongst themselves once more. As the majority of people staring at them dwindled to a small fraction, Chris finally ended his nonchalant monologue with a satisfied smirk.

"Why..." Phoebe began haltingly. "...were they all staring like that?"

"Like what?"

"Well..." she trailed off uncertainly, biting her lip.

"Like they were in awe," Leo interjected, confusion lacing his uneasy tone. "I would have thought that...with Wyatt and everything..."

Chris breathed a soft sigh. "You have to understand...the Charmed Ones are legend here. Most of these people grew up hearing about your legacy; all of your rescues, vanquishes, triumphs. Very few blame you for Wyatt, because he was the only Halliwell to turn out like that."

"So we all...fought against him then?" Paige clarified uncertainly.

Chris slowed his pace as they arrived at the stone counter they'd been heading towards, where a wide-eyed young woman was alternately staring between the witchlighter and his entourage. He turned and raised an eyebrow at Paige. "You know I can't answer that."

She huffed softly to herself in frustration, but Piper frowned at her warningly. If her sisters wanted to keep getting any answers, it would be best not to antagonize the one giving it to them, after all.

Chris turned back to the young woman, whose eyes were darting between them nervously. "Five standard meals, please."

The woman nodded hastily and then darted into a narrow side door behind the counter. Chris sighed as she departed and rested his weight against the counter, reaching up to massage the bridge of his nose in weariness.

"So why were you up all night?" Piper ventured curiously, fully expecting him to deny her an answer even as she asked it.

Surprisingly, he responded in truth. "Well, first I had to meet with the rest of the Council and give them a full report on everything that's happened and the progress of my mission, then while everyone was working on getting the Safehouse 9 refugees relocated I was trying to figure out how we can adjust all of the safehouse wards to keep everyone hidden."

"Why you?" Leo blurted in surprise.

Chris' eyes narrowed, bristling at the implied insult. "Because I'm the one Council member that understands wards and magical theory the best. Who do you think put the wards up in the first place?"

Leo raised his hands placatingly, trying to keep his tone measured and unoffensive. "I didn't mean anything by it, I just assumed that...well, that the founder would be the one to work on the wards."

"There was more than one founder, you know," the witchlighter sneered.

"H-here you go! Five meals!"

The building tension between the two men abruptly snapped as the young woman from before interrupted them in a high-pitched squeak. Spread out along the counter were five trays, upon each was a glass of real, fresh orange juice and an odd assortment of food.

"Thanks," Chris replied shortly. He snatched the tray nearest to him and abruptly stalked away. Piper hurriedly grabbed a tray as well before following after him, and her sisters and ex-husband hastened to do the same.

"I didn't mean to upset him...I was just asking," Leo grumbled to himself as they all trailed after the witchlighter. Phoebe sent him an empathic smile.

"Leo, I don't think it's what you said exactly. He seems pretty wound up with everything going on, and he hasn't slept at all," she surmised understandingly. "You probably just struck a nerve somehow."

The Elder eyed her dubiously, but remained silent. They followed the whitelighter to a nearby table that was mostly vacant, and each took a seat on the benches. Piper sat next to Chris purposefully, returning her sisters' questioning glances with a challenging look. He shifted slightly as she made herself comfortable on the bench beside him, seemingly unnerved by her continued, and admittedly unusual, support.

"So..." Phoebe murmured across the table from them, staring down at their trays with furrowed brows. "What exactly are these...things?"

Chris chuckled involuntarily, jolted from the uneasy tension between the five of them with her whiny tone. "The largest bowl has quinoa, mixed with berries and almond-milk. Like I said, we don't really have access to animals with everything that's happened to the outside world, so we make do with what can be grown from the earth. That means we have to take special care to get everyone the protein and other nutrients they need. Quinoa and rice are good sources of lots of nutrients, so you'll see it a lot at meals. Thankfully we have some pretty awesome volunteers who make a variety of different dishes using what we have, so it never gets boring or repetitive."

"Keen...wah?" Paige sounded out the foreign word with obvious distaste. "It sounds like some kind of nasty toothpaste."

Chris threw his head back and laughed outright, startling them. Neither of the four individuals from the past had ever seen him laugh so freely, and it suddenly occurred to each of them that he'd always been tense and wary in their presence before - they'd just never taken the time to notice.

He quieted and directed a small grin towards the redhead. "It does, doesn't it? Don't worry, it tastes better than it looks. Well, when it's made right, that is. It's kind of like a cereal or oatmeal - a grain, similar to wheat. They mixed it with...I think that's blackberries, and also almond-milk to give it a sweeter flavor. The small plate next to it has boiled bamboo shoots. Bamboo grows fast, so it's useful for feeding thousands of people at each safehouse."

Piper glanced at her sisters, who were both grimacing down at their food in a very comical way, and then her gaze shifted to Leo, who was contemplating a bamboo shoot on the end of his fork. As she watched, he shrugged slightly and popped it into his mouth to chew for a moment, and then he blinked in surprise.

"It's sweet!"

Chris' lips twitched in obvious merriment, looking as though he were highly entertained by their actions but trying his best not to laugh at them again. Piper glanced back down at her tray and spooned a small mouthful of the foreign grain, nabbing a whole blackberry in the process. She was surprised to experience a pleasant combination of tastes that acted together in tandem to produce an enjoyable and fruity result, balanced by the textured grain.

"That's pretty good," she commented out loud, raising her eyebrows at Chris. He smirked at her in return and then turned to eat his own meal.

Having no other excuses to resist or put off their turn, her sisters finally tried the food on their trays and echoed their own pleased surprise. They ate in silence for a few minutes, letting the background noise of multiple conversations wash over them, but then a young man with wild hair and mischievous amber eyes stepped up to the side of the bench where Piper and Chris sat, grinning at them all.

"This seat taken?"

He plopped down on the bench without waiting for an answer, surveying them with an unrepentant smirk.

"Morning, Aidan," Chris greeted the newcomer casually. "Looking to put your foot in your mouth again?"

The four from the past shared a look of confusion before they caught sight of the man's sheepish smile and hunched shoulders, recalling someone with a similar stance from the night before.

"Oh!" Paige exclaimed. "You're the one from yesterday who...erm..."

"Blurted out secrets he shouldn't be sharing?" Aidan finished with another roguish grin. "Guilty."

"And you're over here because...?" Chris questioned, trailing off with a challenging note to his voice.

"To meet the Charmed Ones, _obviously_!" he replied with relish, shrugging off the witchlighter's borderline hostile reaction. "Everyone else in the raw wants to, I'm just the only one brave enough to actually come over here."

"Or stupid enough," muttered Chris in an undertone.

"In the raw?" Leo repeated, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

The young man waved a hand dismissively. "Resistance slang. You'll get used to it."

At this vague answer, the sisters turned and eyed Chris hopefully for a more thorough explanation. He caught sight of their expressions and made a soft disgruntled noise in the back of his throat. "RAW stands for 'Resistance Against Wyatt.' It's part of the code phrase I used to key us into the wards yesterday."

Piper remembered the odd phrase Chris had spouted at the end of their flight through the city, the words measured and rhythmic like a spell. _'We are raw. The flame inside us will never die.'_ It made more sense now, in hindsight - a statement of who they were and their resolve to fight, no matter the cost.

"So how are you liking the raw?" Aidan chattered excitedly. "It's probably nothing in comparison to the cars and shopping malls and iPhones you guys have back home though, right?"

"Eye phones?" Phoebe repeated. "What is that?"

"Something that doesn't exist until 2007," Chris growled through gritted teeth. "Shut _up_ , Aidan."

His impish face grinned bashfully. "Whoops. Sorry man, you know I'm real bad with mortal history. It was my worst subject."

"You went to Magic School?" Paige questioned with interest, her eyes lighting up at the mention of the place.

"Of course! Lots of people here did, Mrs. Mitch-"

"Aidan!" Chris snarled.

"Whaaat?" he whined plaintively. "What did I say this time?"

"Missus?" Paige repeated faintly, her expression growing pale and utterly poleaxed. "Wow...um, guess I get married after all."

Phoebe grinned at her sister brightly. "Well, at least now we know what his last name starts with."

Chris scowled over at the young man. "What part of 'don't tell them anything' did you not understand?"

"How was I supposed to know they hadn't met yet?!" he exclaimed indignantly.

Chris sagged with visible exhaustion. "Aidan, can you just..."

But whatever he was about to ask was cut off abruptly as his eyes took on a faraway glaze, as if he were looking into the distance at something only he could see. Used to this occurrence from whitelighters, the group waited patiently until his eyes blinked back into focus.

"I have to go, the Council needs me," he announced unceremoniously. "Aidan, stay with them and make sure they don't get into any trouble."

"Hey!" Paige and Phoebe protested simultaneously, scowling.

Aidan's eyes widened in alarm. "Uh- I dunno if-"

"And _don't_ tell them anything. Understood?"

"But-"

" _Understood?_ "

"Okay," Aidan relented weakly, looking as though he thoroughly regretted sitting down in the first place. The witchlighter orbed away without further comment, disappearing with the familiar jingling sound they'd all become so used to.

In the sudden absence of a buffer for his comments, Aidan eyed the four time-travelers the way a cornered mouse might look at a giant eagle. Paige and Leo were too busy scowling at the place where Chris had disappeared from to notice his trepidation, however.

"What is his deal?" Paige demanded, then rounded on their new escort. "And why does everyone just do what he says anyway? I thought you people had a council of leaders, not an emperor."

Aidan's cheerful disposition faded abruptly. "He's not an emperor. He's a good man and a great leader. Everyone respects him; we'd trust him with our lives."

Leo grimaced at this description of the one person who annoyed him most. "But _why_?"

The man's molten orange gaze fastened upon Leo in amazement. "You don't know?"

"There's a lot of things we don't know," Paige admitted slowly, frowning. "Chris being one of them. All he's ever revealed about himself is that his family was killed and he's doing all he can to save them, along with everyone else."

Aidan's eyes widened even further, his mouth parting in shock. Phoebe leaned forward eagerly, sensing the chance to seize a few more answers.

"Tell us about him," she requested gently. "Please?"

Aidan shook his head nervously. "Nooo, no way. He would totally kill me if I tell you anything else."

"He wouldn't have to know," Paige persuaded with a sweet smile and wink.

Piper frowned over at her sisters, recalling the rage the witchlighter had displayed the day before when they'd learned more than they should have. "I don't know, guys..."

"It's hard to trust someone you don't know," Leo interjected sagely, peering around at the sisters as if he weren't intending the words to be aimed at their escort. "Especially after all the lies and manipulation."

"But he was just protect-" Piper began to protest, but Aidan interrupted her words in outrage.

"Chris has always done the right thing!" the young man protested. "Even if it looks bad, he never does anything unless it's for the right reasons!"

"Wrong things done for the right reasons don't make those actions correct," Leo responded calmly.

Aidan's face darkened like a summer storm, clouding over with an indignant anger. "How can you say that when he's sacrificing everything for you?"

They had begun to attract the attention of nearby residents, but the young man didn't seem to care as the people at neighboring tables leaned forward to eavesdrop.

"Everything?" Leo repeated dubiously.

"Don't you know the rules of time-travel?" Aidan demanded incredulously, then rounded on the sisters. "Haven't you ever wondered why more people don't attempt to change things?"

The three women glanced at each other with bewildered expressions. Paige chewed on her bottom lip as she contemplated her own foray through time. "Well...when Grams' boots sent me back in time, I tried to change Allen's death and...I mean, I _did_ , but then he died anyway in a different way."

Aidan nodded at her. "Exactly. Time is very resistant to change; it's a sentient magical force that _really_ doesn't like to be messed with. The Council researched it heavily once Chris and Bianca suggested their plan, and they found out that there is only one way to change a massive event, especially one that involves death. If it's something that is absolutely destined to happen for whatever reason, then it's literally impossible to change."

"So there's no hope?" Piper asked in despair, thinking of her tiny son and the dark road laid before his feet.

Aidan shook his head impatiently. "That's not what I meant. Great change - like changing the morality of such a powerful being - can only come with great cost. Time demands an exchange for something like that. Think of it as an angry kid who doesn't want to part with a toy...you have to give it a different toy, so it won't get mad and want the other one back."

Leo frowned in confusion. This theory was vastly different than anything the Elders had ever taught him, but it made a strange kind of sense. Trying to change an event without giving up anything in exchange would result in the same thing happening even more forcefully than the first time - as Paige had discovered when attempting to change the fate of Penny's late husband. But in order to change something as massive as the morality of the Twice Blessed...

The Elder swallowed and closed his eyes as he realized his own foolishness.

"But what could Chris possibly give in exchange?" Phoebe inquired, scrunching her face in confusion.

Aidan regarded her solemnly. "The highest price anyone can pay."

The sisters exchanged puzzled glances. He opened his mouth to continue, but it was Leo's voice that broke the silence instead.

"His existence."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like my work, please consider [buying me a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/cassavey)


	6. Come Halliwell or High Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a play on the English idiom: "come hell or high water."
> 
> Also, there are quotes from episodes 6x02, "Valhalley of the Dolls, Pt 2" and 6x06, "My Three Witches" used in this chapter.

" _The time is out of joint:_

_O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!"_

_\- Hamlet, Act I: Scene V_

 

* * *

 

When Chris had first arrived in the past, he spent several weeks spying on his own family: stalking them, studying their habits and schedules, trying to orient himself in the timeline, making sure he had the timing correct for the Titans' attack. Preparing himself mentally for the wrenching pain that punched through his gut every time he saw Piper; beautiful, happy, lively, _whole._ Conquering his desperate desire to orb into the manor and just fall into her arms, weeping; to feel her unmarred skin and run his fingers through her brown hair, not yet stained by blood or his own tears. Throwing up mental and emotional barriers to ensure his own stability, pushing away the haunting memories, burying the overwhelming hatred for Leo that burned in his chest every time he sensed that infuriating presence. Keeping up a running mantra in his head: _Phoebe, Paige, Piper. Phoebe, Paige, Piper. That's not the aunts. That's not Mom._

In those first tense weeks after he orbed into the attic like a windswept hero from one of Phoebe's silly romance novels, it occurred to him how utterly _young_ they were. Barely older than himself, but unspoiled; not yet tainted by bitterness and death and encroaching evil. It was somewhat startling to realize how little they knew about magic and the world around them, how so very little they paid attention to demons and vanquishing and their own inherited responsibilities. And it was thoroughly daunting to see how careless they were with their safety, how thoughtlessly they lived their lives, paying little heed to possible danger. After living in a constant state of alertness for so long, it was absolutely maddening; he wanted to shout at them in pure outrage every time they left Wyatt unprotected in another room, every time they left the manor without throwing up wards, every time they opened the front door without checking first to see what was on the other side. It was like a slap in the face, knowing that he'd finally found his answer.

This was how Wyatt had fallen.

Not because evil had victoriously managed to get their hands on him, but because his family had just _let_ it happen; too concerned with pretending to be normal and their own love lives to even consider protecting their smallest and most vulnerable member.

Despite all the immense love he held for his mother and two caring aunts, their thoughtless disregard infuriated him. He wanted to throw things at them every time a situation revealed their careless naïveté. He wanted to push them, to shake the foundation they'd deluded themselves on, force past the walls they'd thrown up around his presence and make them _see_ , for just one moment, what it would do to the world. Only the knowledge that his presence should influence the timeline as minimally as possible held him back, but he couldn't help but let his fury slip a few times - like when Leo didn't even bother fighting for the right to stay with his family and just _left_ them in the care of a complete stranger, or when Piper was more concerned about being model mom than to consider his warnings of the future, or when the sisters paid more heed to their transient boyfriends than to the vanquishes they could have been accomplishing.

Though he had never intended to show them his future, to reveal the entirety of its desecration...when they were forcibly deposited back in his home time he was disgusted to realize that he was _glad_. He _wanted_ them to see what their ridiculous idiocy would create, _yearned_ for them to finally understand why saving Wyatt was so utterly crucial. It was so wonderfully and horribly gratifying when their confidence faltered in the face of his burning skyline, presented with a ruined husk of their bustling city. When they'd finally seemed to understand, to quietly let him take the lead and show them where to go, accepting his words as truth the way he'd wanted them to from the very beginning, it was like a balm to his angry soul.

And then it had all fallen apart.

Standing there, watching his family groan and sob on the floor like broken children, witnessing their confidence shatter in the wake of his reckless decision spurred by fury, did not gratify the simmering anger that had raged beneath his ribcage for so much of his life. It did not fill him with satisfaction or a sense of superiority. Instead, that burning rage turned inward, redirecting bitterness and transforming it into a curdling sense of shame and disgust like nothing he'd ever before experienced. He wanted to punch something. Someone. Maybe himself.

What good could possibly come from satisfying his own childish need for vengeance? How could any of his selfish actions even marginally contribute to saving Wyatt, to erasing this broken future, fulfilling the mission he himself chose?

After the doors to his family's new rooms closed, a barrier between him and the shattered expressions of his family, he sagged against the stone wall between the wooden doors. He stared unblinkingly at the torch directly across from him for several moments, watching the blue orb casting its warm, steady glow on the smooth stones.

"What am I doing?" he whispered to himself.

"You know, I've been meaning to ask you the same thing," Erica commented dryly from behind him.

Chris released a soft sigh and then turned to face his old friend. She stood a few feet away, one hand resting lightly on a leather-clad hip. "I tried to stop them, you know. I _knew_ that spell was a bad idea, but...they're just so stubborn."

The Valkyrie raised an eyebrow at him. "Yeah, almost as stubborn as you. Chris... _why_ haven't you told them who you are?"

He scowled fiercely in response. "You know I can't reveal too much of the future without the risk of changing everything for the worst."

"Really? Or is that just what you tell yourself so you can keep running away?"

The witchlighter crossed his arms defensively and silently glared at her, green eyes smoldering.

"Face it, Halliwell," she began, scoffing when the whitelighter hissed and glanced fearfully at the closed doors beside them at the sound of his true name. "They're here now - there isn't much you're going to be able to keep hidden for very long."

A muscle twitched in his clenched jaw. "I can try."

"Keep telling yourself that."

The young man scowled darkly, glowering at her high boots rather than challenging her gaze. Erica shook her head ruefully. "Stubborn. Look, just think about it, alright?"

She waited for the slightest hint of a nod from her comrade, before clapping a hand on his shoulder like a fond sibling.

"Now come on. The Council is waiting for us."

With a weary sigh, the witchlighter dissolved them into orbs and floated away.

 

* * *

 

"Well, Chris...from what you've told us, it doesn't seem like you've made much progress."

Chris frowned at the middle-aged witch dressed in modest blue robes, seated across the expansive oval table used for all council meetings. "That's not true. I'm _so_ close to pinpointing who caused the change, and I've already stopped several attempts to kidnap him and change his morality."

"You can gloss over the facts all you want," a haughty centaur chimed in, tossing his braided hair and stamping a cloven foot like an offended horse. He stood a few spots to the right of the original speaker, towering above the table since there was no seat to hold his long equine body. "But the truth is that you are no closer to stopping his fate than we are to winning this war."

Cries of outrage spread throughout the twenty individuals gathered, the sounds echoing off the cavern walls in a magnified ripple effect.

"Maybe you're right," Chris declared, raising his voice to be heard over the cacophony. "We all knew it was a desperate idea from the moment I suggested it. It's dangerous, has only a small chance of succeeding, and even if it does, it will probably come at a hefty price."

The witchlighter's countenance tightened, his gaze burning across the room with a controlled, steadfast fire. "But I'm willing to pay that price, and I won't give up hope. If you want to stop fighting, Gorian, then you're welcome to leave at any time. No one is forcing you to stay."

Gorian's features hardened, an angry flush rising within his high, elongated cheekbones. "That is not what I meant."

"Well that's what it sounded like," Chris retorted, crossing his arms and shifting back to lean against the hard wooden seat. "It's true, I haven't figured out the real cause of Wyatt's turning. But I _am_ close, and I refuse to back down now - no matter what you or anyone else thinks about it. I won't give up on the chance to stop all of this from happening in the first place."

"And if yer wrong?" a grizzled old man chimed in gruffly, leaning forward to rest his scarred forearms on the great oaken table. "If there be no true cause for his...'turning'? If ye can't prevent the path of history, can ye kill him?"

After a brief moment of tense silence, Chris replied calmly: "As I said last year...I would rather die than see all of this happen again. If I can't save him, I _will_ stop him."

The brunette ignored Erica's searching gaze in his peripheral vision, instead focusing on the old man's eyes until he backed down and gave a sharp nod of acceptance.

"Tha's good enough fer me."

The rest of the Council seemed to take the man's nod as a signal for the rest of them to accept the situation as well, and despite a few hushed grumblings still flitting about the room, the original woman who'd spoken beforehand stood up to continue the meeting.

"Now that's settled, in regards to Safehouse 9: we were able to rescue a fourth of the residents, all from the lower floors furthest from the Regime's break-in point. Thankfully, many of them were unharmed; those that were not will more than likely survive their wounds. The portal has been closed and blocked so the Regime cannot follow, and our geokinetics and dryads are currently working on extending the housing capabilities of Safehouses 2, 5, and 6 in case of another emergency scenario like this - thank you, Melorna, for your suggestion."

A wispy dryad several seats to Chris' right looked up from the armrest of her chair - which, to his stifled amusement, seemed to be changing shape and arching up into the dryad's gently caressing fingers like a contented cat - and gave a dreamy smile to the woman addressing her.

The witch continued: "As you're all aware, the whereabouts of Safehouse 9 was somehow communicated to the Regime. When that information was released, to whom, and by whom, are still a mystery. It is our duty as members of this Council to find how this information is being leaked, and get rid of the traitor as soon as possible. Keep your eyes and ears open. Report everything you find."

She waited for everyone's assenting nods or spoken agreement, and then asked: "Are there any questions, suggestions, or issues that anyone would like to bring to the floor before we close?"

"Is it true the Charmed Ones are here?"

Chris couldn't tell who'd spoken, but it didn't matter - all eyes in the room swiveled toward him for the answer, mingled hope and disbelief on their faces. He frowned irritably, wondering if he should lie - but he'd always been honest with the Council before. They were all good people, for the most part, and had been chosen as representatives of the many thousands of refugees from each safehouse for that very reason. With reluctance, he finally answered: "Yes. The Charmed Ones and Leo came here with me."

Instantly the hall was flooded with mutters and whispers, everyone's faces reflecting their excitement.

"Did they bring th' boy with 'em?" the gruff old man from before demanded loudly.

"No," Chris immediately replied, and was fiercely glad it was the truth. No matter how much sway he held due to his status as the main founder of the Resistance, nothing he could have said or done would have prevented a large mob of magical beings from slaughtering his baby brother if they'd had the chance. Even though Wyatt was now vulnerable, stuck in the past with only Grandpa as his guard, his chances of survival were infinitely higher there.

Though, a part of him wondered if maybe this situation is what gave evil the chance to turn his brother in the first place.

The hushed conversations continued, filling the room with a humming sound similar to a nest of bees. He waited tensely, eyes darting around the room as his ears strained to hear any possible threats to his family's safety.

"They could help us-"

"-powers are a great asset to-"

"-think of the damage they could cause in-"

"This gives us the chance to-"

"-option of whitelighter healing again!"

"-turn the tide of the war-"

Only three people besides Chris remained silent. He nodded in gratitude to each of them, and doubly reinforced his mental estimation of their loyalty. Erica nodded back at him, whilst the other two simply returned his gaze for a brief moment. Eventually, when the excited debates finally ebbed in volume and several members seemed to be settling down, Chris stood to draw attention to himself.

"They will not be fighting," he declared firmly, his voice carrying easily through the sudden silence. "My first priority is getting them back to 2004 safely. Or did you think you could just keep them here and ignore what it would do to the timeline?"

Several pairs of eyes glanced away from him guiltily. He surveyed the rest with a hard stare.

"I will not let my family be used as war toys," he spat, anger roiling within his gut like a living thing. "I'm sticking around to change the wards so we can avoid anymore tragedies, like what happened tonight. But then I'm taking them home."

He sat back down amidst complete, dead silence. Several seats to his left, one of the people who'd remained silent during the babble ducked their head to hide a pleased smirk. Despite the outrage burning in his chest, Chris made a mental note to let his family meet their loyal old friend when they awoke in the morning.

After a few further beats of silence, the man stood. "Well, if there's nothing else, I'd say this meeting's closed. Angie?"

The witch who'd been the general spokesman for the proceedings, the third person who'd refused to get involved in the debate to use his family, stood and nodded sharply. "Dismissed. Everyone who does not have pressing duties, your assistance is needed for the relocation of 9's refugees."

Chris stood and stretched wearily, then turned to Erica as most of the Council members filtered out of the room to assist the relocation, with a few individuals remaining behind to converse in soft undertones. "Guess it's time to go brainstorm."

The Valkyrie fixed him with a stern glare, furrowing her eyebrows into a firm scowl. "Yeah? And when was the last time you slept?"

He rolled his eyes. "This morning."

"How long?"

"Well, _Mom_ , if you really have to know, I got a full f-"

"Chris."

He broke off and turned towards the one who'd spoken, surprised to see the witch standing before him. Angela was a kind, but stern woman, with limited telepathy as her only active power; fit more for running a household or business than fighting a war. When Chris had met her for the first time, it was on one of the Resistance's first reconnaissance missions, when they were still scrambling to save anyone they could in the beginning years of the war. She'd been ankle-deep in the blood of her husband's fallen body nearby, struggling to survive the demon hoard raiding their hideout and protect the magical children they'd housed there, when he and two others had orbed into the mayhem. Though grieving, she'd been a loyal supporter of the Resistance from that day onward.

She stared him in the eyes for a few moments of silence to convey the importance of her question, then inclined her head politely. "May I speak with you privately?"

He'd always appreciated her sense of propriety when it came to reading others' thoughts, so he gave her a warm smile and replied: "Of course."

Since she required eye contact to carry on a telepathic conversation, he focused his gaze directly on her eyes. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Erica slip away towards the main hall.

_I lied in the meeting, Chris._

Chris blinked in surprise, but steeled the rest of his features so that no one would be able to ascertain the general meaning of their conversation. _You know who the traitor is._

_No. But we do know that it was one of the Council._

A grieved sigh slipped out of his mouth. Everyone in the Council had been trustworthy members of the Resistance for many years. To have one turn on them, after so many years of loyalty, was nothing short of devastating. _Who all have you told?_

_Just you, for now. The only other person who knows is the clairvoyant who discovered the treachery in the first place. She could see no more than the knowledge that they were part of the council, and that they'd met with one of the Regime four nights ago. Of course, she has been sworn to secrecy and sealed that promise with a blood oath._

He unfocused his gaze and stared unseeingly at the far wall over Angela's shoulder, turning the information over in his head for a moment. Finally he looked back at her. _Why are you telling me?_

She gave him a hard stare. _Because your family is not safe here. If the Regime can get to your mother, they will be able to erase you from existence._

He had considered this from the moment he recognized the furniture in the attic, of course, but the reminder still hit him like a slap. _I won't let that happen._

_You can't protect everyone, Chris. You need to send them back as soon as possible. If the Regime can kill you before you are born, it will erase the Resistance too._

As much as he wished he could deny that, she was right. It had been his grandfather who came up with the idea before his unfortunate death - where and how they could conceal a large group of refugees within ground zero - but it had been Chris who used magic to achieve it, who gathered followers and formed a council to govern them, who lead an army against his brother's demonic legion from the shadows of the Regime's walls, who smuggled prisoners out of Wyatt's dungeons in the cover of night, right under the nose of the most powerful man in the world. There was a chance that someone else might take a stand in his place if the timeline was tampered with to such a large degree, but the chance was slim. More than likely, it would create a cascading paradox that would eventually implode the timeline.

He sighed heavily. _I have to tell them. They won't be careful otherwise, they're still too young and foolish._

_You cannot speak of this out loud to anyone. I will summon them to the Council in the morning._

_Bring him too,_ Chris replied, nodding at the man from before. He waited for her to follow his gaze to the man. She nodded thoughtfully, and returned her focus to his eyes. _They'll be asleep for at least 8 hours, if not longer. I plan on figuring out the new wards in that time while everyone else is working on the relocation._

_Thank you. I know this must be hard on you._

He aimed a sardonic smirk at her. _When is it ever not?_

Angela chuckled softly and inclined her head in agreement, breaking their eye contact. "You have a good point."

Taking her spoken response as an indication that their conversation was finished, he nodded politely and turned to head towards the room's main exit. The large meeting room for the Council, which was sarcastically renamed "the war room" by several resistance members, had been warded against magic coming into or out of the cavernous walls. In order to orb back to the residential hall where his and his family's rooms were located, he would have to be several feet clear of the door.

"Oh, and Chris-?"

He turned and met Angela's troubled gaze, raising his eyebrows as her mouth drew downward into a displeased frown.

_Once you change the wards...take care whom you give the access codes to._

 

* * *

 

"What?" Piper demanded in outrage, glaring at her ex. "What do you mean, 'his existence'?"

Phoebe scrunched up her face in obvious confusion. "But I thought he was going to go back to the future once he saved Wyatt?"

"Yeah, I mean..." Paige frowned. "Isn't that kinda the point? Fix things and then go back to enjoy what you fixed?"

"Not necessarily," Leo responded, gesturing with his hands as he explained. "Aidan is right, time itself is an immense magical force. Sending someone forward and backward through time is actually somewhat easy - it's the details that are hard. It takes several Elders focusing their power together in order to successfully send more than one person to an exact place and time. Chris had to know that there was no guarantee he'd ever make it back, especially if he succeeded. But..."

"In order to change Wyatt's future, he has to change everyone's future," Aidan continued, his expression still lined in anger from the Elder's previous statements. "Wyatt owns everything. Not just Earth, but all the other realms too. If Chris changes his b- er, Wyatt's fate, he changes everything else; all the people that died, all the governments and cities that were destroyed or taken over... He would literally be rewriting decades of history with one action."

"Wow..." Paige commented, her eyes wide with awe. "That's pretty heavy."

"But that's crazy!" Phoebe protested vehemently. "Why would he sacrifice himself for something that might not even be possible?"

"Because it's worth it," the redhead stated with a simple shrug, his tone suggesting that this should have been obvious.

The four time-travelers sat in stunned silence for several moments, reflecting on the information they'd gathered. All around them, several hundreds of people and magical creatures continued to eat their morning meal and converse amiably - all of them, victims of an evil age brought about by their youngest family member, hoping and praying desperately for Chris' success and consequential sacrifice.

The sheer thought was daunting.

Piper scrunched her eyebrows together, puzzling over the thoughts that had occurred to her in their minutes of silent reflection. "There's something I don't understand..."

She trailed off, glancing at Aidan for permission to continue. He looked back at her warily, but raised one eyebrow in curiosity nonetheless.

"Last night, in the- the broadcast..." She grimaced in remembrance. "Right before Chris turned it off...Wyatt said something that was specifically to him."

Aidan blinked in surprise. "I wasn't watching, thankfully. What'd he say?"

She hesitated, trying to think back to the previous night. Her emotions had been so overwhelming at the time, her heart so horrified by what she'd seen and heard, the memory was already becoming vague and muddled by her unconscious desire to push away the shocking reality. "He said...something about knowing he was here, that he'll find him. And that Chris had betrayed him."

"I think the exact wording was: 'I'll make you wish you had never betrayed me, Christopher,'" Leo supplied. Piper darted a quick smile of gratitude in his direction, then focused her attention back on their appointed babysitter.

"Ouch." Aidan winced. "I dunno if I should be the one to explain that."

"Please?" Phoebe pleaded gently. "We just want to understand all this mess."

He inhaled slowly, then heaved a deep and long-suffering sigh. "He's so gonna kill me for this."

The young man leaned forward and braced his arms against the table. "Okay, it's like this... when the raw first started, we didn't have a lot of resources. We were scrambling to pick up the pieces around the world and rescue everyone we could -well, actually I was 11 at the time, so I wasn't really involved, but- basically, Wyatt and his demon thugs were constantly one step ahead. They had a big army, lots o' power, and they'd killed off most of the whitelighters. Witches were unprotected and the magical community was in chaos. Thousands of witches and powerful forces of good were stuck in Wyatt's dungeons. Someone had to do something."

"You needed a spy," surmised Leo, his brows pinched in thought. "Chris."

"And when Chris came to the past to stop all of this, it revealed what side he was really on," Phoebe finished.

Aidan nodded. "Exactly. Wyatt trusted Chris, above all others. Chris saved everyone in the dungeons and revealed that he was never on Wyatt's side from the beginning. And then there was that whole mess with Bianca and, well...I'm not sure what all happened, but I know Chris got the hell outta there and then when he went back to the past, Wyatt's fury raged for _months_ afterwards. He blew up a ton of- well...basically he was just really pissed."

"Wait, so you sent your _only_ spy back in time?" Paige declared incredulously.

"Of course not! Obviously we have more now. I don't know who they are of course, that's Council info only; but Chris was the one who went back to your time because...well, I mean, he was the one who came up with the idea."

_"-_ _I was the only one that didn't want to see Wyatt murdered for what he's done!_ _"_

"Yesterday, he said it was because he was the only one who didn't want to...kill Wyatt," Piper said softly. The words left her mouth with a rancid, nauseating taste; just the thought of anyone killing her sweet, innocent, blue eyed-

_...except he isn't innocent, is he?_ she thought, her heart aching and heavy within her chest. She swallowed and pushed it away from her mind, focusing instead on Aidan's wary expression. Carefully, she finished her question. "What did he mean? Why is he the only one that doesn't want to kill my son?"

"Uhhh..." Aidan responded, his amber eyes widening in alarm. "I think you should ask him that."

Paige huffed in frustration. "Oh, come on. What's the big deal?"

Piper aimed a frosty glare in her sister's direction. "I know he doesn't want you to tell us anything, Aidan. And _we_ will understand if you don't answer."

Her two younger sisters made faces at her emphasis but remained silent, letting Piper take the lead in the conversation. She gazed at the teen beseechingly.

"I just...I need to understand," she implored, desperate to know the source of their whitelighter's selfless, fierce determination. "He could kill my baby. Anyone else would've. But...he won't. With every ounce of strength that he has, he has fought to save Wyatt every step of the way - no matter how vicious we were, no matter how much we resisted, he still stuck to his mission. Never resting, never taking a break, not even for a moment. And I just...I _need_ to understand that. Why would he do that for Wyatt? For us? Why go so far when he could just take the easy way out? Why try so hard to save someone who's already lost?"

She clamped her lips together, trying to forcibly stem the flood of questions that had poured out of her in sheer desperation. Blinking away the tears that had inadvertently formed during her speech, her vision cleared to reveal Aidan's helplessly forlorn expression.

"Because..." He hesitated, his voice wavering tremulously in the face of her emotion. He ran a hand through his hair roughly, making a soft noise of frustration in his throat. "Because you're his hero."

Taken aback, she veered backward slightly in her seat. "I... what?"

Aidan sighed helplessly, looking as though he didn't want to answer them, but just couldn't restrain himself. "You're his hero, you always have been. All three of you, actually. He always talked about you, before he left. Used to go on and on about your strength, your commitment to saving innocents and fighting evil, never giving up, never leaving anyone behind - especially family. When the raw was created, he made sure that those mottos became an integral part of what we are: Never abandon anyone, never back down in the face of evil, no matter how hard it gets. I mean, he even named things after you; the room we're in right now is called 'Piper's Kitchen.' PK for short, of course."

This time, she didn't bother blinking the tears out of her vision. She heard Phoebe sniffle softly across the table, but didn't bother to look. All she could see was the devastated look on Chris' face when she'd told him she never wanted to see him again.

"But..." Paige protested, her voice trembling. "He always seemed so angry with us."

The teen shrugged, his expression bewildered. "I dunno. Maybe you weren't quite what he expected you to be."

 

_("-you three need to get serious, because if you keep putting your personal lives before your Wiccan duties, you're gonna pay for it.")_

 

Piper closed her eyes in defeat, wishing she could blot out the memories.

 

_("Well then, pay attention! Because the world I grew up in, families hardly existed! I never got a chance to know mine."_

_"Not my fault."_

_"Not yet.")_

 

_We didn't take him seriously_ , she realized, shame curdling in her chest and sitting heavy on her heart. _We didn't care about his mission or the lives he came to save. We didn't care that he came to save our family._

_No wonder he always seemed so fed up with us._

"What..." Leo cleared his throat nervously. "What about me?"

The redhead eyed him with clear suspicion. "What about you?"

"Well...why does he hate me so much?"

Aidan laughed nervously. "Ha! That, uh- that's because, ummm-"

"Maybe it's because you don't know when to keep out of other people's business."

The five of them each jumped in surprise at the hostile voice emanating from above them and whirled their heads around to stare up at Chris, who'd apparently returned from the Council while they were distracted in conversation. He scowled down at them all fiercely, his eyes burning with anger.

"Were you planning on sharing my entire life story?" he inquired snidely, aiming a sneer at the teen sitting furthest from his position.

Aidan glared up at him defensively, rather than backing down as he had when he'd first joined their group. "I just told 'em what they needed in order to understand that you're on their side."

Chris opened his mouth to retort, but then flinched in surprise at an unexpected touch. He uncrossed his arms and inclined his head to look down at Piper's hand clutching the frayed hem of his ebony shirt. She stared up at him earnestly, her brown eyes desperately trying to communicate her sincerity.

"I'm so sorry, Chris."

The anger drained from his expression, swiftly replaced by bewilderment. "For what?"

"For the way we've treated you. The way _I've_ treated you."

He blinked in surprise, then shrugged off-handedly. "No worries. It's cool."

_No, no it's not,_ thought Piper, but he had already continued speaking. She remained silent, resolving instead to talk to him in a more private setting. He would never be honest with her while surrounded by hundreds of people who could (and most likely would) eavesdrop. She understood that much about his personality, at least.

"The Council wants to talk to all of you. Are you finished eating?"

They all grudgingly nodded in silence. Chris pointedly ignored their sudden awkwardness in his presence and motioned for them to stand. As they moved to comply, he waved an arm carelessly and orbed their trays away, presumably to wherever the kitchen staff housed their cleaning facilities. The brunette waited for them to gather together at the end of the table and then gestured again, forcibly sending them to the entrance of the Council's main meeting room.

As the last of the glowing orbs dissolved, he tilted his gaze back to the redhead still seated at the table. The teen eyed him warily, as if he were a bomb that could explode at any second. He sighed wearily. "...thank you. I appreciate you standing up for me."

"...uh, yeah. It was nothin'. Hey, um- sorry for telling them stuff. I just...they're just so irritating and-!" Aidan exclaimed, then abruptly closed his mouth and flushed in embarrassment. "Look, man, I'm sorry. I shouldn't-"

"Oh, trust me," the brunette drawled sarcastically, his lips canting into a grimace. "I'm well aware how frustrating they can be."

The teen laughed, and then shrugged and shook his head ruefully. "Good luck, Chris."

"I'll need it."

With a wry grin, the witchlighter waved casually and then dissolved into orbs once more. When his vision cleared and reformed into the main hallway outside the war room, he was met with an amusing view of his aunt scowling irritably, hands planted firmly on her hips.

"You could'a warned us, y'know," Paige pointedly stated.

"I could've," he replied brightly, taking great care to maintain a straight face. Paige had always been his favorite to verbally spar with.

Her mouth dropped slightly in comical outrage, and he hastily turned around to face the war room's entrance so she wouldn't see his lips twitch. "This is the main meeting room for the Council. It's where we hold all major discussions and plans. Think of it as the Parliament of the Resistance, if you want."

Chris pushed open the heavy stone door before they could respond, and nodded to the two people he saw through the opening before stepping inside. His family slowly followed him into the room, glancing around with a mixture of curiosity and wariness. At the far end of the expansive table set in the center of the cavern, Angela stood to welcome the newcomers.

"Greetings, Charmed Ones," she nodded to the sisters, and then to Leo. "Greetings also to you, honored Elder."

"Uhhh...hi," Piper replied warily, her eyebrows raising in surprise. At her elbows, both of her sisters repeated the greeting with varying degrees of cheerfulness.

Angela gestured leisurely with one arm to encompass the table. "Please, be seated."

"Thank you for your hospitality," Leo responded politely, looking around the expansive room in curiosity.

"Yeah, we really appreciate your help," Phoebe added emphatically, as the four of them moved towards the nearest chairs.

"Especially considering..." Paige trailed off, and shrugged with an awkward smile. "Well, y'know- Wyatt."

"Well, he was the only Halliwell kid to turn out like that, so I suppose we can let it slide."

The time-travelers immediately whirled their heads around to stare at the man seated to the left of the witch, who stood slowly once he'd gained their attention. Chris ducked his head to hide a wide grin.

"Darryl?!" Phoebe and Paige gasped in tandem, their mouths falling open in complete surprise.

The grey-haired man returned Chris' unsuccessfully hidden smile, then winked at the sisters. "In the flesh."

They squealed in delight and sprinted across the room, enveloping him in a giant four-armed hug. Piper and Leo followed at a more sedate pace, with Chris trailing behind after telekinetically closing the doors with a lazy hand movement.

"Wow, you're looking...grey," Piper commented with wry humor, raising her eyebrows in surprise.

Darryl snorted in amusement, untangling himself from the younger sisters' arms. "And you're looking way too young. It's good to see you, Piper."

She smiled delightedly and gave him a tight hug, then moved aside to give Leo the chance to greet their old friend with an extended hand.

Darryl eyed the Elder grimly, and nodded instead of returning the offered handshake. "Leo."

The Elder blinked in confusion at the unfriendly response, slowly lowering his hand. Awkwardly, he replied: "Uh...hey, Darryl."

After a few beats of uncomfortable silence, Darryl noticed Chris standing off to the side, his gaze locked with Angela's. The cop moved forward to grab the young man's attention, and waited until the emerald eyes focused on him before clapping a hand firmly on his shoulder.

"Didn't get a chance to say hi in last night's meeting. Welcome back, Chris."

They exchanged a brief hug, with Chris smiling warmly in return. "Hey, man. I'd say it's good to be back, but it was a hell of a trip to get here."

The former cop guffawed in good humor. "I'll bet. Come on, let's sit down. We've kept Angie waiting long enough."

Each of them moved to a chair nearby, with Chris seated between Darryl and Angela. The sisters glanced at each other as they sat in the high-backed wooden chairs, then surveyed the rest of the giant table.

"I don't get it," Paige commented. "Why such a big table if it's just you three?"

Angela turned her head and focused on the redhead. "If you're referring to the rest of the Council, they are all sleeping. We worked long into the night to transport and settle the refugees from Safehouse 9."

Abruptly reminded of the tragedy they'd witnessed, the time-travelers' expressions sobered.

"We're so sorry for your loss," Phoebe offered in sympathy, her expression clouded with sorrow.

"Thank you," Angela replied with a firm nod. "But you must understand, this is a war. We expect casualties. Every member of the Resistance knows that they could lose their life at any time without warning, regardless of whether they have magical powers or not."

"That's terrible," Paige declared, horrified.

"That is our world," countered the blonde witch calmly. "But we did not call you here to discuss death. You were called because there is some information you must be made aware of, that is not safe to speak of out loud."

The sisters exchanged bewildered looks, tinged with alarm. Piper warily replied, "If you can't talk about it, then-"

"Angela has limited telepathy," interjected Chris. "She can exchange thoughts with you, but only through eye contact."

The woman waited for expressions of understanding to cross the sisters' faces before continuing her explanation. "I will speak with each of you individually. Please be forewarned that you must not speak of this out loud with anyone, unless in the utmost dire circumstance."

Smirking at his family's raised eyebrows and alarmed expressions, Chris commented cheerfully: "So who wants to go first?"

Darryl chortled softly. "Stop teasing them, kid."

"What?" he replied, affecting an expression of pure innocence. The former cop snorted and reached over to ruffle the brunette's hair affectionately, before Chris ducked away.

"You two seem close," Leo commented, genuine surprise coloring his voice.

Their amused expressions fell instantly. Chris' face filled with wariness, whilst Darryl's expression morphed into one of intense dislike. He opened his mouth to respond, but Chris quickly blurted: "Well, since my father wasn't around much, Darryl was kind of like a second dad."

Darryl's gaze swiveled to Chris' face immediately, his eyes widening in disbelief. The witchlighter gave a minute shake of his head, staring meaningfully at the councilman, before directing his gaze back to Leo.

"Yeah, well..." Darryl added gruffly, quickly hiding his surprise. "Seeing as how his _father_ pretty much abandoned him, I spent a lot of time with Chris while he was growing up. He came over to play with my boys often."

"How are the kids?" Piper asked quickly, attempting to soothe the sudden thick tension. "Is Sheila doing well?"

If anything, her attempt at easing the awkwardness in the room only magnified it. Darryl's expression clouded with pain, and Phoebe winced in response, raising up a hand to massage the skin over her heart.

"Sheila's dead," Chris informed them shortly, his words clipped and devoid of emotion. "So is Mikey. Darryl Jr is at Safehouse 2."

Piper swallowed and closed her eyes in grief. "Oh. Darryl, I'm...I'm so sorry."

"It was years ago, Piper. That's not important right now."

"What _is_ important..." continued Chris impatiently. "Is the threat we're facing now. So, seriously - who wants to go first?"

Angela surveyed the time-travelers calmly, her expression revealing none of her thoughts or any possible impatience with their delay.

"...I will," Leo volunteered softly, his voice subdued in light of everything they'd learned over the past few days. He locked eyes with Angela, silently staring at her as she conveyed the necessary information.

While the Elder was successfully distracted, Darryl leaned towards Chris and spoke in a whispered undertone. "He doesn't know?"

Chris glanced at him warningly as his aunts leaned forward, straining to hear the conversation. He thought for several moments, and then answered Darryl's question indirectly.

"Piper." He waited until her warm brown eyes met his gaze, and then continued - ignoring the strangled noise of surprise from the man to his right. "What all did Aidan tell you while I was gone?"

Piper raised her eyebrows and gave him a pointed smile. "What, you want me to be honest with you, when you won't be honest with us?"

He paused, then couldn't hold back a snort of laughter. "Okay, I walked right into that one. Touché."

Darryl chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief. "Yeah, she's got ya there, kid."

She smirked and nodded, accepting the mild praise. A few seats downward, Leo sighed grimly and sat back in his chair, then nodded to Phoebe beside him. "You next."

Phoebe cautiously met Angela's eyes, blinking in surprise when the woman's voice filled her mind and dulled the sounds filtering through her ears. The sensation was oddly disconcerting.

Chris leaned forward and braced his forearms against the table, thoughtfully studying Piper as he considered his options. She returned his intent gaze with a small mocking smile that tilted the corners of her lips, an expression that was all at once both familiar and unfamiliar; a pale shade of the expression she would one day wear in response to her boys' often dishonest tales.

They stared at each other in a silent battle of wills as Chris contemplated the best possible course of action. Piper seemed to trust him now, having seen visible proof of everything he'd ever told her; and he _had_ promised the night before that they could all talk about Wyatt's descent into darkness. He couldn't risk them knowing future information, yet at the same time could not possibly hope to deflect everything that would undoubtedly reach their ears now that they were here in his time. Meanwhile, the other two sisters wavered on a cliff's edge - wanting to trust him based on their sister's example, but hesitating in consideration of his past actions and Leo's wavering opinion of him. And Erica hadn't been entirely wrong earlier this morning; the idea of completely hiding the entirety of the future timeline was a ludicrous concept now. He could continue to resist their attempts to glean information from him, further bludgeoning the wavering thread of trust between them; or, he could take his friend's advice, and yield slightly - controlling what they learned, manipulating the flow of information, and compromising it into an option that would both satisfy their curiosity whilst fulfilling his own need for secrecy.

He nodded abruptly, decision made. "How 'bout this? You ask me something you want to know - that's _not_ crucial future information," he clarified at the sudden gleam in her eyes. "I'll answer you fully and truthfully, without leaving anything out. Then you tell me what Aidan told you. Deal?"

Piper pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Anything I want?"

"As long as it can't impact the timeline in a major way. Anything about your second son or what happens to any of you is off limits, obviously."

Leo and Paige leaned forward in great interest, their eyes darting back and forth between the two witches as if their conversation were a tennis match.

Piper chewed her bottom lip as she considered the deal, though she'd already planned on agreeing. "And how will I know that you aren't leaving anything out of your answer?"

Chris huffed a soft laugh. "Well, you trust Darryl, right? He's known me all my life. He can tell you whether I'm telling you the truth or not."

Piper eyed the two of them for a brief moment, and then nodded. "Deal. But I get one question for everything Aidan told us."

"Fair enough." He grimaced. After a short pause, the witchlighter smirked ruefully and spread his hands wide, palms turned toward the ceiling. "Ask away."

Phoebe abruptly nudged Paige, nodding her head toward Angela. "Your turn."

"Awww, man!" whined the redhead in a soft undertone. "Fill me in later, okay?"

Phoebe agreed in slight bewilderment, focusing on the conversation happening a few seats to her left while Paige locked eyes with the middle-aged witch.

Piper's humorous expression gently morphed into a calm, serious gaze. "Alright. First question...last night, you told me that evil was within Wyatt's heart most of his life, poisoning his mind, and that it didn't show up until it was too late."

The witchlighter furrowed his eyebrows, his expression tense and wary. "Yeah..."

"What did you mean?" she continued. "How do you know that it was something that happened in his early life, and not later on?"

Silence reigned over the room after her question for several moments, and then Chris blew out a breath that ended in a breathy chuckle. "That's one hell of a loaded question."

"Can you tell me?" she inquired, frowning. "Or do I need to pick something else?"

"Piper!" Leo protested in a quiet hiss, greatly interested in the answer.

Chris slowly inhaled and then exhaled, his eyes unfocusing as he considered her question. After a few minutes of reflection, he said: "No, I can tell you this. After all...if and when we succeed, none of it will matter."

_The whole point of my mission is to change Wyatt, after all_ , he thought grimly.

Delighted with his response, Piper aimed a beautiful smile at the whitelighter, filled with more cheer than he'd seen on her face in months. The sight stabbed him right through the heart, reminding him of lazy Sundays spent in the kitchen - just the two of them, mother and son, baking cookies for the rest of the family. They would take the batches out of the oven and carefully grab one each, eating the melting dough before it had a chance to cool and harden, chocolate and peanut butter dripping down their hands; and then he would look up at her and grin, and she'd smile impishly back at him, as if it were a secret that no one else could share - that very same smile now right in front of his eyes.

He stared at her, at a complete loss for words; drinking in the sight of her happiness as though a drowning man that would never see the sun again.

The smile on her face twitched and faltered, slowly fading away in confusion. Puzzlement, and the slightest hint of suspicion, began to fill her brown eyes as she focused on his strangely broken, yearning expression. Under the table, Darryl quietly knocked his foot against the whitelighter's leg.

Chris inhaled sharply, looking away from her face and focusing instead on the cavern wall far behind her, blinking away the telltale moisture burning the corners of his eyes. Taking an unsteady breath that shuddered on its way into his lungs, he swiftly replayed their conversation over in his head and recalled his mantra from a year prior.

_Phoebe, Paige, Piper. Not the aunts._

_Not my Mom._

"Wyatt was always different from other kids his age, growing up," he began, forcing his heartbeat to slow and his voice to remain steady. "It wasn't just that he had so much power or came from a famous family of witches, but rather in the way he reacted to certain situations. He wouldn't throw tantrums over things that upset him - he would enact retribution. If another child stole his toy or pushed him, he wouldn't cry and stamp his foot like a normal kid; instead, he used his powers on them as punishment. He was ruthless; unstable. He craved power of any kind, was totally obsessed with it."

Feeling more in control of his emotions, Chris straightened and looked back at his family, dividing his attention between each of them rather than simply focusing on Piper. "He was incredibly controlling and possessive. As he got older, his amount of friends grew smaller. Anyone that he cared for, he essentially considered as 'his'. If anyone hurt that person in any way, Wyatt would unleash his fury on them. A bully once pushed someone he considered 'his' down a flight of steps, breaking one of their legs and fracturing an arm."

Chris frowned, recalling the memory. "Wyatt was upset, but he didn't react in an over-the-top way...just healed the one who'd fallen down the stairs. By then he'd learned what was considered a normal reaction and what wasn't, so he waited. And when no one else was nearby, he orbed that bully to where no one could hear them screaming, and tortured them within an inch of their life. The only reason he didn't kill them was because he was discovered before he could finish them off. He was 15 at the time."

His family stared at him in abject horror, their eyes wide and mouths hanging slack. Surprised to see Paige paying attention to the conversation, he glanced over to the blonde witch sitting on his left side.

Angela gazed calmly back at him. _I didn't wish to interrupt you._

"Oh, sorry," he replied out loud. "Go ahead. Piper, I'll continue explaining after you two are done speaking."

Piper swallowed and attempted to compose herself, taking a deep breath before focusing her attention on Angela's face. Chris leaned back in his chair with crossed arms, content to wait silently until the mental conversation was over; but Leo bludgeoned his plans, as usual.

"Is he telling the truth?" the Elder asked Darryl, his expression haunted. Despite the question that he'd asked, Chris was gratified to notice that there was no true suspicion in his father's voice or eyes; the man was simply overwhelmed.

Darryl frowned and grudgingly answered: "Every word."

The Elder's expression twisted, and he raised up a hand to cover his mouth for a few moments until he'd composed himself. "I don't understand. Why didn't we _do_ something?"

"You really think Wyatt would leave evidence that could be used against him?" Chris questioned, a cynical smirk tugging one end of his lips. "He healed the bully himself, and threatened him 'til the guy promised never to tell. And who would have believed him, anyway? Wyatt was supposed to be King Arthur reborn, the Twice Blessed, the paragon of good. No one would've believed he could do that sort of thing."

"But what about the one who saw what Wyatt did?" Paige demanded, her eyes still wide in shock. "Didn't they tell someone?"

"Of course they did." After a moment of silence, Chris continued darkly: "No one believed him."

"But- but that's-" Phoebe stuttered, shaking her head in disbelief.

" _You_ didn't believe me when I told you that Wyatt was the evil in my future," the witchlighter pointed out with savage delight. "What makes you think it was any different then? Especially when the bully was completely unharmed. Sure, the guy was terrified of Wyatt from then on, but there was no real proof."

 

_("Why won't you believe me?!"_

_"Because that's ridiculous, Chris! Wyatt would never do something like that."_

_"But it's the truth!"_

_"No, I don't want to hear it. Stop trying to get your brother in trouble for something he didn't do."_

_"But, Dad-"_

_"Chris, if you don't stop this right now, I'm telling your mother. Do you really want to disappoint her like this?")_

 

"I just..." Leo floundered for words, staring at the table without really seeing it. "I can't believe he could-"

"Believe it," snarled Chris, resentment burning within his gut as memories bubbled to the surface. "He's done thousands of worse things. Or have you forgotten what he did to all those people last night?!"

"Chris," Darryl intoned lowly, warning him not to lose control of his emotions once again. The witchlighter glanced at his old friend and huffed slightly, turning his head to glare murderously at the empty curve of the table.

"You're right, Chris," Phoebe ventured gently. "We didn't believe you...and we should have. We're so sorry."

Chris jerked a hand roughly through the air. "It doesn't matter."

Darryl slanted a dubious gaze in the witchlighter's direction, but remained silent.

The group waited uncomfortably in the quiet room until Piper looked away from Angela and focused back on their surrogate whitelighter. She studied his thunderous expression for a few heartbeats, and then ventured a quiet response. "Thank you for telling us, but...why did you want us to know?"

"Because you're not safe here. You need to be on guard; don't trust anyone outside this room, no matter how kind or truthful they seem. At least until we find and get rid of the traitor," Chris answered with a blank expression, then paused. "Except Erica; you can trust her. Despite her personality, she's fiercely loyal."

The time-travelers exchanged worried glances, then unconsciously shifted a little closer to each other, banding together as a family unit without conscious decision. Chris narrowed his eyes at the sight, remembering a time when that gesture included him, but returned his attention to the witch beside him. "Thank you, Angela. We'll probably be a while longer; you don't have to stick around."

She nodded and lifted herself out of the high-backed chair, silently moving around the table and exiting the room, leaving only quiet tension behind. As the doors shut behind the woman, Chris let out a heavy sigh.

"I didn't give you the whole truth, though," he announced suddenly. "It wasn't just about Wyatt's personality. There were other things, little events throughout his life, and once his twistedness was out in the open...all those small things suddenly made sense. I do know that, whatever happens to him, happens before or around the time when you give birth to your second son, Piper."

The color drained out of her stricken face. "So soon? But...but how do you know?"

"Because Wyatt told me," he replied simply, shrugging.

Everyone in the room goggled at him, even Darryl. If the situation and their conversation weren't so grim, he would've dissolved into laughter at the comical sight. As it was, he merely hid a small huff of amusement before returning his focus to their expressions.

"Well he didn't just come out and say it, obviously. There were just certain things about him, things that didn't make any sense...strange things he'd say. And then I learned that he went missing shortly before-" he hesitated for a split second, quickly changing what he'd been about to say. "Before you gave birth. That's when I knew something happened to him, something that turned him into the monster he is today."

Such prolonged exposure to his family was starting to mess with his emotional barriers, affecting his perception of what could be said and what shouldn't. He sighed quietly, mentally willing the conversation to end before he had the chance to blurt out something he shouldn't say.

Piper eyed him for a few moments, gauging his reaction and waiting to see if he would say anything further, then nodded slowly when he remained silent. She glanced at Darryl, who returned a slight nod of consent, confirming the validity of what they'd heard. "I see...thank you for telling us, Chris."

He smirked at her, raising an eyebrow. "It wasn't for free, remember?"

She chuckled softly in return, making him hide a smile as the forlorn expression on her face cleared a little. "That's true. Alright. Well, the first thing Aidan told us is...that your mission is basically a suicidal one."

Chris froze, carefully keeping his expression blank. His mother eyed him carefully, then slowly continued. "He said that, in order to change something that would affect the rest of the world, you would have to sacrifice yourself in return. And that you knew that, before coming to the past."

Every pair of eyes in the room focused on his face, anxiously waiting to see his reaction. He gazed back at them calmly, only the rigid posture of his shoulders betraying any tension.

"He's not wrong," the whitelighter slowly replied. "But that's also not entirely true."

Phoebe leaned forward, her expression pinched in concern. "What do you mean?"

"Well...Wyatt was supposed to be good, right? According to the prophecy, he could be an incredible force for good or evil, depending on how he was raised. So my theory is that he's not destined to be one or the other. If I can change what happens to him...even though it will change the course of history, it shouldn't require anything in return, because it wasn't a destined event in the first place."

He paused, hesitating. "But if it does, then I will gladly pay that price; whether by my life or my entire existence."

"But why?!" Paige blurted, thoroughly baffled at his dedication.

"My reasons are my own," replied Chris, his eyes narrowing with irritation. Out of the corner of his eyes, the witchlighter spied Leo staring speculatively at him; gauging his resolve, assessing his motives. It unnerved him to see such interest from the man instead of blatant dislike; he was much more comfortable with the idea of mutual hatred. Quickly, he turned back to the eldest sister. "Next question."

His mother frowned as she thought, her eyes roaming over the grain lines etched in the table's surface without really seeing them. The group waited in silence for several moments, and then Leo cleared his throat, attracting the eyes of each person in the room.

"I have a question," he stated, glancing at Piper for permission. Chris briefly considered denying the man out of sheer dislike, but squashed the thought when his mother nodded at her ex-husband.

Leo focused his gaze on the young witchlighter, familiar green eyes clearly displaying his puzzled thoughts. "Why did you try to erase our second son's existence?"

Despite the amusing sight of Darryl nearly giving himself whiplash to stare at him in sheer horror, Chris scowled at the Elder in righteous indignation. " _Excuse me_ , but that's not what happened. _You're_ the one who decided to leave your wife after becoming an Elder; I had no part in that. There was nothing stopping you from choosing your family over remaining with the Elders. Don't blame me when _you're_ the one who gave up on your marriage."

"How dare you!" Leo seethed, his face reddening in outrage.

"Look, I don't know what's going on," interrupted Darryl, raising a hand as if to ward off the rising tension. "But you two need to cool it. Whatever you might think, Chris would never purposefully erase someone's existence. Trust me when I say he has more of an interest in your child's life than most."

Forcibly calming himself down, Chris added: "Exactl _y. Thank you_. After all, he was one of the main founders of the Resistance; without him, all of this probably wouldn't exist."

Leo frowned, still brimming with anger and guilt over the witchlighter's statements. "I see."

Chris shifted his eyes over towards the sisters, expectantly raising his eyebrows.

The brunette hesitated, glancing at her husband's unhappy countenance. "Uh, well, he told us that you were the first spy in the Resistance, and you rescued a lot of people. And...that Wyatt trusted you, and he was furious over you going to the past to try and stop all of this."

Chris raised his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. "He just can't keep his mouth shut, can he?"

Reining in his irritation, he frowned and refocused his attention back on his family. "What else did he tell you?"

Piper narrowed her eyes at him. "Not so fast, buster. I get another question."

Letting out an explosive breath of frustration, Chris leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms irritably. "Fine."

Instead of speaking immediately, Piper looked over at her two younger sisters. They met her gaze evenly, each of them communicating various emotions in silence, as only close family can. After a few moments of this, they turned as one to face the two councilmen.

"Last question..." Piper began slowly, her voice firm with resolve. "How do you know us?"

Chris blinked in surprise, and then gave a soft chuckle of amusement. "Piper, didn't I already answer this, like...the first week I came to the past?"

"No, you didn't," his mother replied evenly. "You brushed us off with a half-truth that never actually answered the question. So I'm asking you now: how do you know us, and _why_ do you know so much about our family? Why do you know about Wyatt's life growing up, and about a hundred other things that don't make any sense unless you knew us personally?"

Alarm crawled its way up from Chris' stomach all the way up into his heart, clouding his lungs and sticking in his throat like a live creature. It was too soon- they _couldn't_ know, not yet; they weren't ready for this yet. _He_ wasn't ready for this yet.

"I can't tell you that," he replied smoothly, his heartbeat thundering in his ears.

But his mother wasn't done.

"You said Darryl knew you, your whole life. And before, when those three witches stole our identities, you knew instantly that something wasn't right - even when no one else noticed. You said, in all your life, you'd never seen me take the bait like that other witch did. Aidan said Wyatt trusted you, and you know things about his childhood no stranger should know. You knew your way around the manor, from the moment you set foot in it."

He was frozen. Watching, staring, unable to look away as his doom approached, like a speeding train you can see coming towards you but unable to move or look away from; his doom spelled out upon her lips, written in the determined slant of her eyes, heralded by the insightful words of his own mother.

_No_ , he thought, desperate. _No._ _Not yet._

"So, what I guess I'm really asking is, were you...Wyatt's friend, growing up? Is that why he trusted you, why you know so much?"

Relief, hot and palpable, scorching through his veins; exhaled abruptly on a heaving sigh that exploded out of him. He almost laughed for the sheer joy of his escape, provided neatly and swiftly without any action on his part. Despite the intensity of the close call and the tense, wary expressions of his expectant family, he couldn't help but huff softly with amusement, looking down at the table so his long hair could hide the crooked grin on his face.

She'd provided the perfect out for him. An escape, both true and not true, that would throw them off his trail, encourage trust between them, and subsequently keep them from ever guessing the real truth of his identity. No matter what future knowledge was slipped to them now, it wouldn't matter; so long as no one said outright that he and Wyatt were brothers, they would never guess the truth. He wanted suddenly to hug her out of sheer gratitude.

"You got me," he drawled with an intended air of reluctance, comfortable and reassured in his own ability to keep his one last secret. He tilted his head back up to face them, careful to appear contrite and uncomfortable. "Yeah, I was Wyatt's friend. Best friend, actually. We were extremely close."

Emboldened by the surety of his own family's complete obliviousness and total inability to guess the true nature of their connection, he dared to say: "Closer than brothers."

Darryl eyed him in complete disbelief, his mouth hanging slack. Chris fiercely reined in his urge to laugh, instead focusing on the overwhelmed expressions of his time-traveling family. The sisters exchanged bewildered looks tinged with guilt; half-smiling, half-grimacing at the new knowledge.

"Gosh, Chris!" Phoebe exclaimed, her eyes wide and heavy with guilt. "Why didn't you _say_ something?"

"Yeah, I mean..." Paige added uncomfortably. "We would've, y'know...been a little nicer."

Chris smirked mockingly. "What, you mean like, 'Hi, I'm Wyatt's childhood friend from the future. Oh, by the way, he's evil now, wanna help me stop him?' I'm sure that would've gone over _really_ well."

The sisters grimaced in unison.

"He's got a point," Piper commented wryly, then eyed him with faint suspicion. "But why tell us now, Chris?"

Carefully, he gave an irritable frown, calculating his expression and response. "Well, you'd already guessed. There wasn't much point in pretending." He breathed a soft sigh, purposefully rolling his shoulders in a careless shrug. "Like Erica said last night...you're here now. It's not like I could keep everything from you forever. I'm just...hoping it won't change the timeline too much."

There. Multiple statements, each true in their own right, weaved together to form an impression that would steer them in the entirely wrong direction. _Or, the right direction...depending on your viewpoint,_ he mused smugly.

The sisters nodded understandingly. Chancing a glance at Leo, the witchlighter was uncomfortably surprised to see the man staring intently at him, carefully watching his movements and actions, suspicion warring with doubt in his green eyes. Chris quickly directed his gaze back to the sisters, careful to appear nonchalant and relaxed now that his "secret" was revealed.

"I see." Piper smiled at him, warmth filling her gaze in ways he hadn't quite prepared for. "So, when exactly do we get to meet Wyatt's new playmate?"

He forced a wry chuckle, shifting to a more comfortable position in the hard wooden chair. "You know I can't tell you that, Piper."

"Can't blame a girl for trying!" Paige quipped, delivering her usual saucy smirk. He made a face at her, playing up the banter between them to encourage the new, wavering trust beginning to grow within their hearts. Not for the first time, he felt dirty from his own actions; hating himself for manipulating them with such frequent ease.

To his right, Darryl leaned forward close enough to softly whisper: "You are the luckiest son of a witch I have ever known."

"It's a gift," he murmured back, smug amusement clearly apparent in his voice.

Suddenly remembering their arrangement as Darryl leaned back in his seat, Chris nodded at Piper. "So? What was the next thing Aidan told you?"

Despite the friendliness that had suddenly sparked within their interactions, the eldest sister's expression clouded with reluctance. She returned his gaze uneasily, then slowly replied. "He told us...well, the way he put it was, that you care about us a lot. That we were your heroes."

Chris' mouth fell open in pure shock as a flush of embarrassment crept up his cheeks. "He _what?!"_

The sisters each winced a little at his tone, exchanging an apprehensive glance. Phoebe added softly, "He said you always talked about us, and looked up to us...as role models."

Chiming in, Paige murmured: "Said you named the dining hall after Piper."

"I can't believe him!" he cried in disbelief, outrage pouring out of him in a cracked shadow of his usual voice.

Piper gave him a crooked smile, watching his expression hesitantly. "Well, if it helps...we really appreciate it, Chris. It made me..."

She glanced at her sisters, confirming their expressions. They both quickly nodded. "It made _us_ happy. And, I want you to know that...things will be different, now and when we get back. We can work together to save Wyatt."

Carefully folding away his irritation, Chris slowly nodded. "That's all I ever wanted."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like my work, please consider [buying me a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/cassavey)


	7. We All Have Scars

" _I'm just the boy inside the man_

_Not exactly who you think I am"_

_\- TFK, "Be Somebody"_

 

* * *

 

Leo Wyatt had been many things in his life and unexpected afterlife; devoted medic, loving husband, adoring father, faithful whitelighter, fierce Valkyrie champion, reluctant Elder. He had lived through the high and low points of several decades, gaining wisdom and insight that many mortals would never possess, developing a deep understanding of people's personalities and fears, learning how to encourage and strengthen with only words as his tool. He'd seen people grow and have children and die, and then he'd seen their children grow and die, too.

In all that time, he had never seen anyone lie with the truth quite as skillfully as Chris Perry.

He was flawless; earnest and open, combining emotional tones and facial expressions together with layered half-truths, weaving together a picture of passionate honesty fueled by just the right amount of hesitation. He could manipulate an appearance of truth, pointing you in the direction of an assumption or decision that fit what he wanted you to believe, all the while convincing you with disturbing ease that it was your idea in the first place. It was extremely unsettling, and moreover, dangerous.

There was just something about the man that unnerved him, setting off alarms in his mind, scratching at his senses, squirming beneath his skin; a crushing sense of familiarity, an itch that just _wouldn't_ go away. Ever since he'd first laid eyes on the man, his instincts had screamed at him that there was something _important_ about this time traveler, something obvious and recognizable, something he should _notice_. But no matter how hard he'd tried, he just couldn't quite unravel the mystery that was Chris Perry. Couldn't quite manage to outsmart or outmaneuver the minefield of schemes and manipulations so expertly planted around his many secrets. It irked him to no end, knowing that something strange and undefinable was hovering just beyond his grasp, shouting for him to realize what the secret was, yet being unable to comprehend. It was maddening, and frustrating; coupled with all of the twisted decisions and shifty actions with dubious morals, and Leo just could not quite bring himself to place full trust in the witchlighter.

Oh, he was a good man, certainly. That much was clear in the way that those in the Resistance respected him, smiling with mingled joy and hope in their eyes as he passed them by, obvious in the sheer single-minded dedication with which he pursued Wyatt's salvation, evident in his selfless desire to sacrifice himself for the greater good.

But he _was_ hiding something.

Leo couldn't be certain, of course, but he'd always had an uncanny sense for when he was being lied to. And despite the sisters' warm acceptance of the supposed truth, despite Darryl's wholehearted support of the young witchlighter, he remained unconvinced. There was just something odd about the stark terror filling that narrow face when his wife had begun to corner him with words, secrets buried beneath that overwhelming sigh of contrived reluctance, lurking behind the whispers that followed their group wherever they went. The eerie feeling that he was missing a piece of the puzzle, oblivious to a vital spark of knowledge that hovered vaguely just out of reach, coiled within his heart with every moment spent in this future; drowning him with every unprepared glance he got of the witch.

And Chris Perry was a thorough man. He never went into any situation half-cocked or unprepared, charging in with guns blazing but forgetting to bring the right ammunition (the way the sisters usually operated). He was the kind of person that planned, schemed, strategized, thought, and planned again, until he'd worked out every last detail and readied himself for each eventuality that could be thought of or expected. Leo had experienced this firsthand, when it seemed like outside forces and circumstances were leading them all in a direction that had no other options but the ones presented to them; and then his wife had pointed out that Chris knew what would happen to the Elders when this had all begun and hadn't prevented it - had, in fact, orchestrated its happening in such a way that would allow him undisturbed access to the Charmed Ones' home, to Wyatt. He'd watched Chris lie blatantly to his face, coolly unaffected by the knowledge that he'd been caught at his own game, that someone knew (and had proof) that he'd murdered just to achieve his goals. He'd watched Chris slowly unveil various tiny secrets about the future as time lengthened, cautiously dropping small bombs whenever the sisters started to drift away from the mission he'd shoved into the middle of their lives, igniting their fury against him while also inexplicably stirring their passion to continue fighting.

At first it was saving Paige, and the rest of the world along with her; and they were okay with that. And then it was saving Wyatt, which was still acceptable, but suddenly none of them were quite sure whether his words could be entirely trusted at face value - because if he'd lied about Paige, then who was to say he wasn't lying about this too? And then he wasn't just a simple whitelighter after all, and suddenly there were a lot of things that didn't add up, and somehow saving Wyatt had become saving everyone else _from_ Wyatt, and finally there had been no question whatsoever that this manipulative man ruining their lives could not be trusted.

But now they'd seen firsthand the destruction their little blonde angel would rain down upon this world, and suddenly saving the entire population from Wyatt had become saving him from whatever turned him before the birth of their second little angel.

Leo couldn't help but wonder when the next proverbial shoe would drop, and saving Wyatt would become _stopping_ Wyatt.

Because Chris Perry wasn't the kind of man to graciously answer questions just because you'd asked. Though he'd seemingly, uncharacteristically, allowed Piper to put forth any question she wanted (within limits of course), essentially he hadn't revealed anything major or even truly helpful. Of all the things Chris had ever admitted about the future of his own will, all of them focused around Wyatt. Even his apparent confession of identity had revolved around Wyatt; and Leo hadn't missed that his wife's question had never truly been answered. He'd never given a reason for how he knew so much about them, how well he knew _them_ , with all their personalities and full demon-fighting history. He'd given _an_ answer, but it had been a hinted admission; an agreement to Piper's own suggestion, implying answers of their own imagining for the questions she'd put forth. Maybe it was arrogance, or maybe it was pride, but Leo just couldn't imagine himself or the sisters ever revealing to a family friend some of the things the witchlighter had instinctively known without being told. He couldn't imagine any of them ever allowing a child that wasn't their own near the Book of Shadows, nor showing that child where all the potions ingredients were kept, nor revealing the entirety of their demon-hunting history and personal lives.

Because it didn't make sense, not really; despite the sisters' unanimous acceptance. It didn't make sense for him to cling so tightly to a secret identity that would impact their future in such a small way - what did it matter that they knew who Wyatt's future friends were? How could knowing the grown up version of a small child they hadn't met yet possibly tip the scale of the future in such a drastic way, as he'd always implied? Why would a man, who normally clung so tightly to every secret, so easily give up the one thing he'd held onto the most ardently?

So Leo waited. He watched, silently; ever hunting for the moment when the witchlighter's guard was down, searching for any piece of information that could point to a different possibility than the one they'd been supplied.

And if he focused so adamantly on his uneasy suspicions because there was a small part of him that agreed with the witchlighter; if he was desperately trying to block out the voice hissing relentlessly that he'd failed to fight for the right to be with his family, that he could have _stayed_ and been free to love them openly without stolen moments in the dark with his sleeping son, well...no one would ever have to know.

Not even himself.

 

* * *

 

They remained in the council room until lunch, with the sisters chatting pleasantly with Darryl and Chris while Leo remained uncomfortably silent and somewhat lonely on the fringes of the group, brooding on the nature of time travel and lies. After a short break for lunch, Darryl departed for his home at Safehouse 2 and Chris introduced them to the Resistance's main library.

The sisters had cooed and gasped in awe as they entered the large cavern, which was easily twice the size of the library housed at Magic School, if not more. Books spanned the entirety of the cavern, neatly arranged on stone shelves grown right out of the rock they stood upon and extending far above their heads. The sheer vast array of books and scrolls was so overwhelming, even Leo couldn't help but stare in stunned fascination.

"This is incredible!" Phoebe gasped softly, her mouth unashamedly dropping in shock as they all slowly twirled in place, eyes scanning the great cavern.

"But this is-" stuttered Leo, struggling to wrap his head around the immensity of what his eyes were seeing. "This is even more than Magic School and the Elders' library combined. How-?"

Chris smirked as he observed their astounded expressions. "This is a collection of every book we could salvage at the beginning of the war, both magical and mortal. Along with whatever else we stumbled across after that. If there's a way to get all of us back to the past without being in the manor, it should be in here."

"If?" Paige scrutinized him curiously. "Wait, so you haven't gone through these before? But then, how did you-"

"I used the Book of Shadows to come back the first time," Chris interrupted, then paused for a moment thoughtfully. "Well, the second time too. The Nexus fueled most of the power I needed to create such a specific portal, and the spell I needed was already in the Book. But we won't be able to do that this time, not with such a large group. Wyatt's probably already tripled the security at the manor since we came through. Trust me, we won't be getting back that way."

"Well, we could try the Power of Three," Phoebe suggested hopefully.

Her sisters cast doubtful looks in her direction. "No offense there, Pheebs," Piper commented wryly. "But I think we should avoid letting you write spells for now."

Phoebe scowled irritably, looking highly affronted by the slight to her spell-writing skills. Just as she opened her mouth to retort, however, Chris interrupted their sisterly harassment.

"That's not a bad idea, actually. Calling on the Halliwell line would be much safer though."

Paige peered at him, her nose scrunching in confusion. "Wait, if we're just going to write a spell ourselves, why do we need a library?"

"Because," Chris drawled with exaggerated patience. "As Piper so helpfully pointed out, your last attempt didn't turn out so well. There's a huge section in here on the intricacies of time travel and spell-writing. It should help with making sure the wording and intention of the spell is foolproof before we use it."

His lips quirked briefly at a private joke. "We wouldn't want to end up in the Jurassic period, after all."

Leo grimaced at the reminder of the last time portal he'd intentionally jumped through.

"Right..." drawled Piper, arching one eyebrow in puzzled sarcasm. "So what exactly are we supposed to be looking for here?"

"Any spell, potion, or ritual you can find that will successfully send us back to a specific day in time. And we're going to need to find a site of large magical energy, like a spiritual nexus, in order to power and direct the time portal...since we won't have the Manor Nexus making it easy for us." Chris paused in his explanation and pointed towards a corner of the room where two stone shelves met, with multiple faded armchairs in desperate need of restitching clustered nearby. "Time travel books are in that small corner over there. Spell-writing is the large section in the center of the room. And...Phoebe, I've already orbed all of the history books out of here, so you can stop looking now."

He smirked as she flinched in surprise, guilt flooding her expression as she stopped attempting to crane her neck in search of the magical history section.

"...was worth a try," she grumbled. Chris snorted at her, shaking his head in fond exasperation.

"Come on."

He led them toward the alcove he'd pointed to minutes before, pointedly ignoring their attempts to stop and gawk at their surroundings. Leo noticed a few occupants of the room glance at their party over the edge of their books and then perform spectacular double-takes as they recognized their identities. Uncomfortable with such focused attention, he hurried to catch up with the sisters and their surrogate whitelighter. He slowed to a halt just in time to catch the tail end of Chris' next words.

"-few things, then I'll be right back."

The sisters nodded understandingly, and the man swiftly dissolved into shining orbs before floating out of the massive hall. Leo watched him go, frowning silently in discontent.

"Well, I guess we better get started!" Paige declared brightly, clapping her hands together as if calling a class of students to attention. Piper snorted faintly at her ridiculous enthusiasm, then moved over to the nearest shelf with a small shake of her head.

Leo stared at the stone far above their heads with unfocused eyes, thoughtfully replaying their long morning conversation and analyzing it with an uneasy heart. Somehow, the situation just didn't quite fit right within his mind; his instincts quietly protesting as he attempted to inspire belief in the new information. Like his tiny son attempting to force his square toy block into the slot for circles, the supposed truths they'd been fed grated at his consciousness, leaving jagged edges behind.

"Leo?"

He blinked in surprise at the gentle murmur, slanting his distracted gaze away from the ceiling in order to focus on the source of the voice that had penetrated through his musings. Phoebe hovered next to him; not close enough to inspire discomfort at her proximity, but angled toward him in invitation. _I'm here,_ her posture implied, _if you need me._

"Are you okay?"

She was an empath; she knew he was not. But he tilted his lips up in a smile regardless. "Yeah. Just thinking."

Phoebe's eyes softened around the edges, filling with kindness. "I'm sure Darryl will come around, Leo. Just give him time."

He stared at her blankly for a moment, before realizing that the coiling sense of unease she'd sensed from him had been interpreted incorrectly as malcontent over their old friend's strange hostility. "Oh- Uh. Yeah."

Shaking himself out of the dark mood he'd descended into, Leo stepped forward to join the rest of his family at the bookshelves, purposefully ignoring the piercing gaze that followed his movements. He swept his eyes across the titles, searching for anything that might help them make it back to his son.

 _Understanding the Butterfly Effect; Theory of the Multiverse; How to Avoid the Grandfather Paradox; Time Travel: Magical vs Mortal; Temporospatial Claudications Simplified; Time Travel for Dummies..._ Leo snorted faintly in derision at the title and continued to skim; unsure of what exactly he was searching for, but determined to find it nonetheless. _Ripples and Wormholes; Timeslides, Otherspace, and Pocket Dimensions; Paradoxy vs Parallelism; Interfering with the Grand Design; Potions & Portals: A Guide to the Past; Chronokinesis: Myth or-_

Leo paused, and reached out a hand to tug _Potions & Portals _from its slot between two heavy tomes. The book was slim and light in his hand; flipping it over, he saw that the front cover was decorated with a simple potion bottle interposed over a familiar blue time portal. Giving a mental shrug, he carried the book over to the nearest armchair and sunk down into it. Dust particles scattered into the air as he opened the book and flipped aimlessly through the pages, barely focusing on the words.

 _This would be so much easier if Gideon were here_ , he thought ruefully. His mentor would surely have known the best books to search for their predicament, kindly directing them on the right path with the calm benevolence that Leo desperately strove for in his own position as an Elder. Sighing despondently, he was surprised by the depth of wistful longing he felt for the beautiful alabaster halls of the heavens, filled with billowing clouds and gentle clicking. Despite his fierce resentment towards the other Elders for even considering erasing his son, they would have been a welcome influence of peace on the scattered emotions warring within his heart.

 _("Haven't you realized yet? You are all dead. The Elders are dead. The Cleaners are dead. Good has_ _**lost.** _ _")_

Leo still wasn't quite sure how to deal with the knowledge that his beautiful, cherubic son could grow up to be the cause of so much destruction. Where had they gone wrong? Had he abandoned his family, not just in their past, but also in this future? Did his absence cause this crumbling shadow of their bright world? How could their first son turn out so horribly wrong? And why did their second son refuse to see them, even though word of their presence had surely reached him by now?

Leo frowned, staring intently at the pages in his lap without seeing a single word. _Why_ had Chris concealed Wyatt's turning for so long? They had wasted nearly an entire year fighting with the witchlighter and stubbornly resisting any attempts he made to force them into action. If he had just _told_ them from the very beginning, they could have spent these long months searching for the demon that would bring such ruin to the world. Why tell them only after Wyatt had already been kidnapped by the Order, months after he'd first arrived in their time?

So much of what they'd learned just didn't make any sense; it was like staring at a half-finished puzzle and knowing how it's supposed to look when finished, but missing all the key pieces. Pieces that were no doubt hidden within Chris' mind, unattainable and out of their reach.

As if summoned by mere thought, orb lights briefly illuminated the space in their corner of the library before beginning to solidify into the man that had both concealed and revealed all of the terrible facts swirling in his head. Seizing hold of the opportunity unexpectedly presented to him, Leo lifted his eyes to study the witchlighter, keeping his head angled toward the book in his lap to create the illusion of being engrossed in reading. As the blue orbs coalesced into the lanky form of the young man, Chris' green eyes darted around the open space swiftly; briefly touching upon each of them in turn, then quickly raking across the visible parts of the room before finally coming back to their normal, central position in a slow, relaxed blink. In that same instant, a small amount of tension visibly bled out of the man's shoulders and toned frame. All of this took place in the span of mere seconds. If Leo hadn't been closely watching the man, he would have never noticed the strange actions; and, with a slight jolt of surprise, the Elder realized he'd seen this before. Not just with Chris, but also with the Valkyries and their male soldiers - even some of Leo's old comrades from the war in his human lifetime had exhibited this same brief tension when entering a new room or area, scanning for immediate threats and cataloging the position of allies.

 _He's a soldier._ The thought came suddenly, an unbidden realization that made him blink. He'd never before considered the witchlighter as a warrior, or even a reliable force in battle; at least, not until yesterday's display of magical and strategical fortitude. Somehow the man had always seemed so young to him...far too young to be involved in a war spanning across multiple worlds and planes.

And it was devastating to realize that _his_ son had created this world, where children fight the wars of adults and rely on no one but themselves.

"What's all that for?"

Leo inhaled shakily and cleared his mind, focusing on the sound of Paige's voice to claw his way out of the depressing mire his thoughts had been wallowing in once more. He tilted his head up fully to focus on where she'd gestured, and saw several layers of parchment being spread out over a low table that Chris had apparently materialized while Leo was deep in thought.

The young man glanced up at Paige as she and her sisters crowded closer, leaning over the edge of the table to scrutinize the strange diagrams and symbols covering each page. "This," he replied casually, "is what I will be working on while you guys research."

Piper quirked an eyebrow at him, curiosity filling her expression. "And what exactly is 'this'?"

"Wards," Chris replied simply.

"See, you've mentioned that a couple times now," Paige placed her hands on her hips, giving him a disapproving frown. "But you still haven't exactly explained what they are."

Emerald green eyes blinked slowly in shock. "Oh. Huh...right, I keep forgetting you haven't learned yet..."

He hesitated briefly, seeming to consider what he should say on the subject, then continued after a brief pause. "Well, it's basically a magical barrier that you can put up around a location or object, usually a building. The bigger the area to be warded, the more magical power you'd need. Sort of like a coded spell or ritual that you program to operate at all times, letting only certain things or people inside based on conditions that you set when you create it."

The sisters glanced at each other in surprise and renewed interest, but Leo simply watched the witchlighter as he explained, having already known of the concept of wards.

"So..." Phoebe pursed her lips in concentration. "It's sort of like Wyatt's shield, only invisible?"

He hummed thoughtfully, tapping his fingers against the edge of the wood. "More like the barrier the Elders put around Magic School, but I guess it's similar."

"The Elders, huh?" Piper's eyes narrowed, her gaze focusing on the witchlighter with keen cunning. "Can it keep demons out?"

Leo frowned as Chris smirked approvingly at her, warm affection clearly visible in his expression and voice. "It can keep whatever you want out."

Piper suddenly directed a suspicious gaze towards her ex-husband. "So, how come we've never known about this before?"

Suddenly finding himself the center of attention, Leo stuttered and scrambled to organize a diplomatic response. "Uh- well, it's- I, um..."

"Go ahead, Leo." Chris gazed at him with a blank expression, but a malicious hint of challenge glinted in his eyes. "You might as well tell them."

Leo frowned at the witchlighter, resentment building as he realized the man was purposefully trying to get a rise out of him. Reluctantly, he responded to his wife's insistent stare. "The Elders forbid whitelighters from teaching their charges about wards."

"Why?" Piper inquired with a chilling smile, her tone deceptively calm and cheerful.

"Well...that's..."

Chris chimed in as Leo's voice trailed off uncomfortably. "Isn't it obvious? They didn't want the greatest forces of good in the world to be hidden from their spying eyes."

"You mean it can block the _Elders_ , too?!" Paige blurted, utterly delighted with this prospect.

Chris smirked, confidently ignoring Leo's bitter glare. "It can block anything and everything you want it to. Even the Elders."

Piper immediately sat next to him and demanded imperiously, "Teach me."

"Wait."

Four pairs of eyes swung towards Leo, with varying levels of rebellion in their expressions. He frowned, focusing on Chris rather than the girls as he recalled the witch's earlier offhand comment. "When did they learn about wards in your time?"

The witchlighter's expression darkened, clouding over with a mutinous frown set over a clenched jaw. "Shortly after Wyatt went missing. Or so I've been told. I can't really remember a time where the Manor didn't have wards."

Leo swallowed thickly at the implications in the man's statement, unspoken but clearly directed at him with barely restrained hatred. His meaning was clear: if they'd known the first time around, if _Leo_ had broken the rules and just told the sisters how to protect the manor, the chances of Wyatt being kidnapped and turned evil would have been infinitely less. His heart felt heavy in his chest, choked with a billowing cloud of guilt. "...I see."

The young man had apparently expected him to be defensive, possibly even angry, because he blinked several times in shock and then leaned back to study him openly. Whatever he found must have soothed the strange hatred that had risen up so suddenly, because his green eyes softened and darted away from Leo to refocus upon the scattered sheets of parchment.

Chris cleared his throat in the oppressively awkward silence. "Right. So, basically these symbols here are runes of power describing certain aspects or people, adapted from spells in different magical cultures." He pointed to various places on the nearest diagram. "Each one has a specific meaning, and I'm basically designing this so that each rune is called upon at the time the wards are put in place, showing the magic what should be allowed inside and what shouldn't. Or, in this case, _who_."

The sisters nodded in unison, all three of them staring at the diagram with varying levels of comprehension. Phoebe extended a finger and pointed to a square block of strange symbols and squiggly lines cramped into a corner of the parchment. "And what are these?"

"That's just my notes on how the ritual should be done, what sources of power could be used, that sort of thing."

Paige tilted her head sideways and squinted. "What language is that?"

Chris blinked in surprise. "Uh. Mine."

The women all turned as one to stare at him in a mixture of amusement and disbelief. "You _made_ a language?" Paige clarified, her eyebrows raising dubiously.

He shrugged dismissively. "Keeps people from seeing things they shouldn't."

In the quietly awkward moment that followed, the four travelers from the past were abruptly reminded that this man was not just a warrior, but also a spy - wearing subterfuge and secrecy like a second skin.

"So..." Phoebe hesitantly ventured into the silence. "How exactly do you use these drawings to create a barrier? I mean, wouldn't you need a spell?"

"Well, of course. But spell casting is more than just rhyming words and hoping it works the way you want it to," the witchlighter replied, a hint of aggrieved condescension filtering through his voice, as if he'd expected them to already know these things and was disappointed to have been proven wrong. "For intricate spells, you need other items to support the power of what you're casting, and a written guide of sorts for the magic to follow. Think of it as a combination of making potions, casting spells, _and_ using your powers, just put it together instead of doing it all separately. In this case, it's like... _persuading_ the air to do what we want it to, and giving it the power it needs to sustain that indefinitely."

The sisters absorbed this new information for a few moments, and then Piper raised her eyebrows expectantly. "So can we see how it works?"

Chris shook his head immediately. "No way, I'm nowhere near done with this. It'll take at least two more days before I can come up with something good enough to keep Wyatt's demons out, _and_ have it be different enough that he won't immediately recognize the magical pattern. Plus I'll need to search for a way to fuel that much power into multiple wards in different locations all at once."

Their expressions fell in clear disappointment. The witchlighter smirked at the response and suggested, "You could always read a book on it, y'know."

Both Phoebe and Piper grimaced in distaste, being vastly more comfortable with learning by experience and action, whereas Paige seemed to be considering the idea with a thoughtful spark of interest in her eyes. Chris sized her up for a brief moment, gauging her level of interest, and then moved his hand in a sweeping gesture. Moments later, a sizable textbook sailed across the room and neatly flew into his expectant palm. Paige cocked an eyebrow at him with a saucy smirk, one that he returned in full force while depositing the large tome into her waiting arms.

"It's only fitting," the witchlighter commented wryly. "You're the one who put up wards around the manor the first time, after all."

"Really?" The redhead's face brightened considerably, a wide smile spreading across her features. "I'm _awesome_."

Both Piper and Chris snorted at the exact same moment, a long-suffering sound of sarcasm and amusement rolled into one. Leo blinked in surprise, feeling suddenly wrong-footed. He hadn't wanted to believe the ridiculous idea that Chris could somehow be a family friend, but it was seeming more and more likely the longer they spent time with him. How else could the man be so similar to his wife, if he hadn't grown up spending time with all of them, adopting their mannerisms (as children were wont to do)? This wasn't the first time the whitelighter had exhibited similar personality traits to the sisters, or even Leo himself. He could remember more than a few times where they'd actually spoken the same phrase at the exact same time. Actually, now that he thought backwards over the past year, there were so many instances of similarity that he wondered how he'd never connected the dots before.

Yet, somehow, the knowledge still just wouldn't quite fit within his mind. His instincts buzzed insistently, demanding that he try to find the real truth, an explanation that was different to what they'd been told. The distinct feeling that this was wrong, that Chris was _not_ who he said he was, rebelled against his doubts and fought desperately to reassert the suspicions that had plagued him for so long.

The two eldest sisters drifted back to the bookshelves, scrutinizing the various titles in search of something useful, while the two resident witchlighters both settled into tattered armchairs, immersing themselves in research. Uneasy and filled with discontent, Leo grudgingly resumed his perusal of the small book lying in his lap.

 

* * *

 

Chris showed them the location of the bathhouses before dinner, which they were horrified to learn were actually communal (though separated by gender) due to the lack of indoor plumbing that was so prevalent in their time. Their whitelighter visibly struggled to maintain a straight face while the girls moaned and complained about the possibility of someone walking in on them while they were bathing, with Leo standing off to the side and forcing himself not to laugh at their shared horror.

While the girls ranted to each other about their circumstances, Leo turned to face Chris hesitantly. "So...if there's no indoor plumbing, why do the toilets in our rooms work?"

The witchlighter's twitching lips finally succumbed to his amusement and turned up into a full-fledged grin, revealing thin dimples; once again Leo found himself bludgeoned by an overwhelming sense of familiarity, as if he'd seen that smile somewhere, on _someone_ , before even knowing this man. Oblivious, the witchlighter responded cheekily. "Magic, of course. The contents simply vanish."

Despite what many believed about the Elder, Leo was a naturally inquisitive person. He liked to learn, and was always open to being taught new concepts; it was the main reason he knew how to fix so many household appliances despite having been born during a time without many of those conveniences. Putting aside the strange déjà vu that had flooded his senses upon seeing that delighted grin (and feeling strangely relieved that, for the moment, the man's volatile hatred for him had apparently disappeared), he curiously questioned: "So if the toilets can be powered by magic, why not showers?"

"Showers are a little more complex. They have to supply water _and_ get rid of it at the same time, rather than just getting rid of something. Since we have so many people at each location, it would be a little too time- and magic-consuming to conjure or build thousands of personal showers, so-" Chris shrugged. "A bathhouse was the better idea. Gives our resident naiads something to do besides just supplying the kitchens and the Garden with water, at least."

"You mentioned that before," Leo commented, furrowing his eyebrows in puzzlement. "What exactly is the Garden?"

"Oh. It's where we grow all the food for everyone. I can show you and the sisters after I'm done with the wards...assuming we haven't figured out a way to get back by then," Chris trailed off darkly.

Catching the comment, Phoebe turned to face them and firmly corrected his negative statement. "We'll find a way, Chris."

The witchlighter simply shrugged, not acknowledging her optimism. "You should go ahead. Most people bathe in the mornings, so you should have a good bit of privacy...for now, at least."

Phoebe gave him a small, sad smile, recognizing his avoidance. Then, as one, the sisters all turned and entered the bathhouse together...looking vaguely as if they were marching to war rather than a simple bath, Leo noted with amusement.

Beside him, Chris made a swift gesture as if orbing something into the women's bathhouse. Leo squinted at him quizzically for a few moments, and then orbs materialized a pile of clothes (which looked suspiciously familiar) directly above the witch. They quickly toppled onto the young man's head and then tumbled down to the floor at his feet.

Chris growled. "Very funny, Paige."

Recognizing the clothes as having been the ones given to the sisters that morning, Leo felt his lips twitching and ruthlessly attempted to suppress the laugh that wanted to bubble out of his throat; he didn't want to give the witch further cause to hate him, if he could help it. Meanwhile, the time traveler was still grumbling to himself as he moved toward the entrance to the men's bath, absently orbing the dirty clothes away.

"Give the girls some new clothes, and what do they do? Drop the old ones on my head. You'd think I could get a thank you or something, but nooo. I can't win."

Leo followed the sounds of the witchlighter's ire through the door and into a short hallway made of smooth stone. As he traveled along the path, the sounds of rushing water quickly grew louder and overcame the man's grumbling ahead of him. The light in the tunnel swiftly became brighter as he rounded a corner, and then he stepped through a large opening...into Valhalla.

Blinking in surprise, he reeled back and cast a wide-eyed stare in every direction, distinctly unsettled. Upon closer inspection, the room -if such a vast, hollowed out cavern could be called that- only vaguely resembled Valhalla after all. Unlike the rest of the Resistance, there were no glowing torches providing light here; momentarily puzzled, he lifted his gaze to the ceiling and discovered that the stone had been enchanted to look like a spring sky, filled with billowing clouds and a brilliant sun. A monumental cliff comprised of ebony stones towered far above their heads, covering the majority of the left side of the cavern, with a wide torrent of water cascading down. The immense waterfall poured into large tiered pools extending across the entire available floor-space, with small and somewhat dry pathways connecting each pool to the others. Wide stalagmites with blunted off tops, looking vaguely like giants' footstools, were scattered about the cavern, with smaller waterfalls pouring down to form individual showers in each pool. There were even a few clusters of trees and floral bushes throughout the bathing pools, which were definitely taken straight from the foliage at Valhalla. If he ignored the stone tunnel behind him, he could actually forget that they were all miles underground.

Thoroughly amazed and feeling distinctly like he'd stepped through another time portal while not looking, Leo slowly closed his open mouth and searched around for the man he'd followed into the bathhouse. Chris stood several feet away in the nearest pool, the water level coming up to cover his bare chest just under crossed arms. Smirking, the witchlighter raised an eyebrow at him, wordlessly mocking his imitation of a fish.

"The naiads might have gone a little overboard," Leo commented casually.

Surprisingly, Chris laughed outright in response. "Yeah," the witch agreed with obvious mirth. "They let Erica have a little too much input on the design."

"Well, the Valkyries have always been friendly with the neighboring water folk, so..." Leo trailed off uncertainly. "Wait, are the mermaids here too?"

Chris was already shaking his head before Leo could finish speaking. "They don't get involved with land wars, you know that. They're not exactly fond of men, anyway."

Chuckling, Leo replied: "That's a bit of an understatement."

The witch shrugged noncommittally, then turned around to slosh through the water over to the nearest stalagmite. Leo started to reach for his clothes to strip them off, then froze; slowly, he raised his eyes again to stare at the witchlighter's retreating back. The deep water, buffeted by the constant deluge pouring down from the cliffs, distorted the majority of his body...but what he could see of the man's back chilled his blood. Raised, angry scars littered the pale skin like a nautical map; furrowed rows in ragged lines depicted deep claw marks that had healed painfully and slowly, several puncture marks like that of vampires or fanged beasts clustered around his shoulders and arms, countless angry red knife lines everywhere he looked, and (the most disturbing of all) a large circle of unnaturally white skin dented a portion of his left side - as if someone, or some _thing_ , had taken a huge chunk out of his body.

He felt abruptly sick.

"Chris..." he managed to choke out, forcing the sound past bile that rose up in his throat.

The witchlighter turned expectantly, then straightened and tensed like a coiled snake at the sight of Leo's expression, his posture revealing even more scars on the front of his chest. A dark red scar spread across the man's sternum where Bianca had ripped his powers out months before, but there was also a jagged sun-shaped mark right over his heart - the remnants of a large energy ball, wielded with deadly precision.

"What's wrong?" Chris demanded, eyes already darting over the landscape as if searching for the source of the inexplicable horror undoubtedly displayed on his face.

"What..." Leo tried to swallow, found his mouth too dry, and coughed instead. "W-What _happened_?"

Chris stared at him in complete confusion, his eyebrows scrunching down over puzzled emerald eyes as the alarmed tension visibly drained out of his body. He followed the direction of Leo's appalled stare, and slowly, ever so slowly, understanding dawned. Exasperation warred with embarrassment on the witch's face for several moments; finally, he crossed his arms with a resigned expression. Leo wished he hadn't; now that his eyes knew where to find them, the scars looked so much worse with the skin stretched taut over flexed muscles.

"War." Despite the irritation and defiance apparent in the witch's gaze, Chris' voice was exceedingly gentle as he replied. "There are no more whitelighters, Leo."

 _How is he even alive_? The thought rose unbidden within his mind, impossible to ignore. Bites and knife marks were one thing, but the giant fissures traveling the length of his back would have undoubtedly drained the man of an immense amount of blood, especially if he'd continued to fight the creature or demon that caused it. And the dent on his left side- Leo wasn't even sure he wanted to _try_ and think of what could cause such a wound, but surely it had to have nearly killed the witch; and with no whitelighter healing? _How...?_

He struggled to think of something to say, but the horror was overwhelming, chasing everything else out of his head but the terrible sight of those scars. Chris saved him from doing another imitation of a fish, and continued in that same gentle voice.

"It's okay, Leo. It doesn't matter."

"The hell it doesn't!" Leo snarled, stalking forward before he'd even finished the words. Some of the previous alarm reappeared in the young man's green eyes, and he backed away slightly at the sight of the Elder's rage.

"Uh- Leo, calm dow-"

Leo pointedly ignored him, sloshing through the water fully clothed until he stood directly in front of the witch. A small part of his brain noted with concern the way the man flinched back from his raised hands, as if terrified of touch, but he ignored it in favor of pouring all his concentration into fueling the golden glow blazing forth from his hands. To his credit, Chris simply stood and allowed him to try, calmly watching his face until he slowly realized that the skin was not repairing itself before his eyes.

"You can't heal what's already healed," the witch murmured softly, reverting back to that achingly gentle voice one might use on a terrified, abused animal. He waited a few moments more until Leo finally, reluctantly abandoned the attempts at healing, and then the witch raised his hands and lightly pushed Leo's back down. "It's okay," he repeated softly.

"No. No, it's not." Leo bit out the words angrily, then whirled around to go deposit his sopping clothes on the nearest sidewalk connecting the pools together. "But it _will_ be, because we're going to save Wyatt. We're going to _fix_ this."

As he furiously ripped the donated clothes off of his body and dumped them with savage delight on the floor, Leo decided right then and there that it didn't matter what his instincts told him. It didn't matter that the story they'd been told made little sense when compared with everything else; it didn't matter that he'd never heard of any whitelighters or powerful magical family lines with the last name of Perry; it didn't matter that Chris lied more often than he told the truth. If a man could go through all of the things this one had endured, and still be kind enough to want to rescue and protect the source of all that pain rather than slitting his throat and ending the devastation before it could begin, then that man deserved every ounce of support Leo could give.

Unseen behind the Elder's turned back, a small, genuine smile blossomed on the witchlighter's face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like my work, please consider [buying me a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/cassavey)


	8. This is War

" _A warning to the people, the good and the evil: This is war._

_To the soldier, the civilian, the martyr, the victim: This is war._

_It's the moment of truth and the moment to lie, the moment to live and the moment to die,_

_the moment to fight, the moment to fight, to fight, to fight, to fight!"_

_\- Thirty Seconds to Mars, 'This is War'_

 

* * *

 

One thing that Phoebe and Wyatt share in common is this: they were both born directly above the largest Spiritual Nexus in the western hemisphere.

Knowing this, it really shouldn't have come as a surprise to her that Wyatt would later turn evil. After all, she had always traversed that fine line between good and evil herself, leaning into each side as whim ( _or a demon lover_ , her heart whispers treacherously) took her. Just as the Nexus could be easily swayed for either good or evil, so too could they, having been influenced by its proximity at the time of their births.

Sometimes in the darkness of night, surrounded by unfamiliar stone walls and dimmed orb lights, Phoebe remembers pulling a tiny body out of her sister in the middle of their dining room, and wonders if this apocalyptic future is her fault after all.

 

* * *

 

As it turned out, the witchlighter's stated "two days" for redesigning the wards gradually turned into a week. The days passed slowly, with the sisters still struggling to overcome the shock of this new world that was such an inverted reflection of their own; reluctantly trying unfamiliar food at their various meals, trekking through stone halls filled with haggard refugees that stared as they passed, and bathing at the communal women's bath whenever most residents were vacant from the cavern, uncomfortably aware of the lack of privacy (which didn't seem to concern anyone but them). Conversations now focused primarily on magical spells and concoctions to get them home safely, along with plans to guard their youngest family member whilst aiming to capture and eradicate the threat to his morality at the same time; rather than recklessly pushing for answers or revealed tidbits of the future as they had previously. Unexpectedly, Chris lost much of the open hostility that had always been so prevalent in their exchanges beforehand, as he slowly became used to their new-found trust in his motives; though, as the days wore on, his tension and frustration mounted exponentially in direct proportion to his lack of progress with redesigning the wards. He also seemed overly cautious with his words, as if still expecting them to attack suddenly at the slightest misspoken statement. Despite his obvious hesitance in their constant proximity, he rarely left them alone or with any other members of the Resistance after that first day, continuing to escort them personally through the expansive underground halls in between long research sessions in the library.

Phoebe found the lack of open aggressive behavior between all of them _immensely_ relieving. Even though her sisters (and most likely Chris) had taken the empathy-blocking potion months ago, whenever tension between the four of them had skyrocketed in the past she would still receive vague impressions of intense dislike and annoyance that pounded beneath the bone of her skull; having an unspoken peace between all of them was like having her family back, in a strange sort of way. Somehow, in the small span of a few days, their previously volatile reactions to the witchlighter had flipped in the opposite direction, enveloping the young man under the wing of people they considered family regardless of the absence of blood connection. Even more strange, however, was the complete one-eighty Leo's opinion seemed to have taken. Previously the most outwardly spoken against Chris, suddenly the Elder supported him in every situation; even going out of his way to assist the witchlighter in unexpected moments, such as spontaneously materializing another research book for the witchlighter whenever he came close to finishing his current one, or offering gentle words of confidence and reassurance whenever his corrosive temper exploded out of sheer frustration, or quietly poring over books and maps in search of spiritual nexus locations without even being asked.

Even more peculiar, the one who seemed most unnerved by Leo's apparent change of heart was Chris himself. With every moment of quiet, understated support, the young man would shoot long, searching looks of unease toward the Elder while he wasn't looking; as if, for some unfathomable reason, he'd _expected_ Leo's dislike, and couldn't quite wrap his mind around the idea of his enthusiastic, wholehearted support.

She wasn't entirely sure what had happened, but she could easily pinpoint _when_ it had changed. While she and her two sisters had happily enjoyed the decadent bathhouse, partially in the midst of washing her hair with an unfamiliar liquid that smelled strongly of lavender and honey (pilfered from the unmarked supplies provided for residents via tables along the edges of the entrance-way, which she later learned were actually created by members of the resistance due to the lack of retail bathing products), through the stone walls she had suddenly caught a tidal wave full of emotions: horror, disgust, sorrow, pity, and an overwhelming sense of grief and guilt intertwined together that threatened to knock her right over. Surprised and caught completely off-guard, she'd swayed dangerously on her feet and had to catch herself against the edge of a wet stalagmite until the waves of emotion spiked, focused to a knife-point of conviction, and then finally faded altogether into a burning resolve that pulsed like its own heartbeat. Leo had refused to speak of what had transpired when she asked him later that night in a soft undertone, but the shuttered look of unyielding resolve made her wonder if she truly needed to know the answer.

Regardless of how it had happened, the Charmed Ones were finally able to enjoy peace with their whitelighter and resident Elder in the same room for more than 5 hours per day; a feat that easily shattered their previous records of extended civility. The days and nights they spent in the library researching together could almost be considered companionable; the peaceful silence broken only by soft, intellectual conversations or the crisp sound of a page turning.

Well, until Erica stormed in on them, that is.

Exactly one week to the day their unwise portal had exploded and unceremoniously dropped them in 2026, the sound of the fierce Valkyrie stomping into the library could be heard long before they saw her peevishly stalking toward their ragtag group.

"Oi!" She bellowed into the silence, earning hisses of disapproval from the various library residents. "Ha- Chris!"

 _Ha-Chris?,_ reflected Phoebe with private amusement. _Wonder where that ridiculous nickname came from._

Startled out of immersive research with Leo over a map of their world and its nearby planes, the witchlighter glanced up with a thunderous scowl; his disposition visible proof of the mounting frustration that had been building inside him with every day that the wards remained vulnerable. Much like Piper in one of her more mulish moods, the young man lashed out with acerbic sarcasm. "You know how libraries are normally silent? That's generally for a _reason,_ Erica. Or are you purposefully attempting to reinvent the 'bull in a china shop' metaphor with sheer noise?"

The dark-haired woman ignored this verbal harassment and came to a stop a few feet from Paige's favorite armchair, hands perched on her hips in an aggressive stance. The brunette witch marked her place with a tattered bookmark and twisted in her seat to stare up at the amazon towering above her, frowning grumpily at the interruption to her reading. Leo glanced between the two Resistance leaders calmly, waiting to see where the conversation would lead before attempting to jump in.

"Were you _ever_ planning on showing up for training?" Erica drawled, sneering at her friend and comrade.

Chris merely raised his eyebrows, surveying her with a rapidly cooled expression and launching into a condescending rebuttal, spoken in a tone that clearly questioned her intelligence. "In case you've forgotten, Erica, this is the Charmed Ones. They are _not_ supposed to be here. Currently, I'm trying to fix the wards, and then we will all leave. Explain to me _why_ you feel the need to-"

Even later, she still wasn't quite sure how it had happened.

One moment, the Valkyrie was standing behind Paige's chair. In between the span of a blink and the intake of a single breath, suddenly Erica was leaning over the table with a wide-edged knife at Chris' throat.

Heart nearly leaping up into her esophagus, Phoebe opened her mouth to call out a warning as she and her sisters surged up from their chairs, Leo freezing with wide eyes focused on the sudden danger so close to him - but then her eyes focused, and she realized Chris had an athame poised at Erica's jugular, his expression terrifyingly blank. Briefly, she wondered where in the world he'd pulled the blade from...and why, despite all her martial arts training, she'd still been unable to track their movements.

No one spoke for several moments, every pair of eyes in the library trained on them in wide-eyed alarm.

A feral sort of grin stretched across the Valkyrie's face, white teeth contrasting sharply with her bronze skin. "You've gotten slow, witchling."

Instead of responding with anger (which would've been _normal_ , Phoebe reflected with a sort of fond exasperation), a fierce, cocky smirk bloomed on the man's face. "Try me."

The Valkyrie sniffed disdainfully, stepping back and sheathing her blade in a thigh holster with smooth, practiced movements. " _Please._ You should've had me pinned to the wall before I even passed that pretty little redhead's chair."

Paige scowled darkly at the condescending reference, sharing a disgruntled look with Piper - who still had her hands raised and half-poised to freeze or blow something up at the slightest sign of need. Chris leaned back in his seat, deftly whirling the athame in his hand as if were a shiny toy rather than a lethal weapon, and then he twisted his wrist in a swift motion and it disappeared...somewhere, presumably wherever it had initially come from. Phoebe stared at his hand in dismay, furious with herself for being unable to discern where he was hiding the blade.

"You know I can't, even if I needed to," the witchlighter responded, his tone suddenly serious. Phoebe raised her eyes to his face swiftly enough that she was able to catch sight of his green eyes flicking briefly over her and her sisters, before coming back to rest steadily on Erica standing in front of him. His solemn demeanor melted back into a wry smirk. "And, of course, I don't need to bother proving my skill."

The Valkyrie cocked an eyebrow and leveled a hard stare on him. "If you're going to protect her, you need to be sharp. There won't be any second chances."

A dark emotion flashed briefly over the witchlighter's face, but it was too swift for her to catch its meaning. He remained quiet instead of responding, so Erica continued in a friendlier tone. "Oh come on, Chris. It will help, and besides- you can always just bring them with you. Hell, they probably need it more than you do."

"What exactly is going on?" Piper demanded. She seemed calm for now, but Phoebe knew that gentle demeanor could easily change if her big sister didn't get an answer, _soon._

Chris glared at Erica for a few moments more, silently protesting with his disapproving gaze; unmoved, Erica simply raised her eyebrows in retaliation, staring at him as if he were a recalcitrant child. Eventually, the witchlighter relented, sagging against the back of his chair with a heavy sigh.

"It'll be easier if I just show you."

 

* * *

 

And that was how the three Charmed Ones and one Elder found themselves inside an immense cavern of epic proportions, which housed a mixture of what appeared to be a barracks, armory, training center, and obstacle course all rolled into one.

Standing just inside the entrance-way, the four visitors from the past stared in absolute disbelief at the sheer magnitude of the open space stretching out before them. The stone beneath their feet cut off abruptly into a cliff directly in front of them, extending out to either side and then sloping downward to provide access to the ground level, which spanned outward farther than their eyes could even see. In the middle of the ground floor, a large flattened area provided training space, with various targets spaced in even rows throughout multiple locations. Both wooden and steel weapons were clustered off to the side near each row of targets, ready and waiting for use. Already, several small groups of various human and magical folk were engaged in mock battles with each other, or standing off to one side utilizing the targets to practice their powers.

To their right, extending far into the distance, was a massive obstacle course the likes of which they'd never seen. It looked vaguely like a demented theme park, with twisting paths, sheer drops, nauseating jumping puzzles, mazes with disturbingly mobile greenery, towering hills, sloping pits, and jagged rocks. And when she turned to the left, focusing on the distant area past the immense training grounds, she could see what appeared to be some sort of warehouse with no roof. Her eyes couldn't quite focus on the contents of the structure, but whatever it was covered nearly every inch within the free-standing walls. Much like the bathhouses, the lighting within the cavernous area was provided by an enchanted ceiling, disorienting her and making her feel as though they weren't underground at all.

Ever snarky in the face of surprise, Paige wryly commented, "Anyone else notice that each new room we see is bigger than the last? I mean, it's like a size competition in here."

Chris responded only with a faint snort of amusement. Still awed by the sights, Phoebe turned to him in a daze. "What is this place?"

"P.A." Erica replied simply, as if that somehow explained everything, and then vaulted down the smooth incline to their left as though she weighed nothing at all, heading for the training grounds at a swift trot.

Crossing her arms, Piper huffed in clear scorn. "As if we know what that means. _Honestly_."

Phoebe caught a glimpse of Chris' fond smile before he ducked his head to hide the expression behind his long bangs. "It stands for Prue's Arena."

Three pairs of eyes homed in on the witchlighter like triple laser beams. "Prue's _what?_ " Piper repeated sharply.

The witchlighter started down the sloping incline, following after Erica and giving them little choice but to follow. "We call it an arena, but it's really where we train our powers and skills as fighters. Weapons and potions are kept in the warehouse over there to our left."

"How did you even create such a huge space underground?" Leo interjected before the sisters could demand to know why such an area had been named after their deceased sibling. _Though,_ Phoebe mused ruefully, _it kind of fits. She would have enjoyed a training room._

"We have a lot of dryads, geokinetics, and earth-shapers here. Since nature and water covers most of the world, people with powers relating to those two elements are all over the place. Air manipulation isn't quite as prevalent as it used to be, but we have a few of them. Fire manipulators and people with electrokinesis are the most rare, of course, since those are reactionary elements rather than ones permanently present on Earth."

Intrigued, Paige inserted herself into the impromptu lesson from her fellow witchlighter. "So they worked together to create this? How long did that take them? I mean...it's like the Grand Canyon in here, it must've taken forever!"

Chris hummed thoughtfully. "I think it took at least a month. It wouldn't have taken that long normally, but since we needed such a huge open area that could be reshaped at will, they had to make sure the surrounding rock was sturdy enough that it wouldn't cave in, but also soft enough to be moved whenever we needed to expand. It didn't start out this big, obviously."

"And..." Piper ventured, looking rather impressed. "...this is all under San Francisco?"

Chris' eyebrows furrowed immediately, an expression of complete confusion passing across his features. "What? No, of course not."

The four visitors from the past immediately stopped walking and stared at him in unison, thoroughly stunned.

"Wait, wait, hang on- if we're not in San Francisco, then where the heck are we?" Phoebe demanded, being the first to find her voice.

"And why is the entrance in the east part of the city?" added Paige, her nose scrunching as she tried to puzzle out the logistics of their location.

Chris blinked at them for a moment and then shook his head fondly with a tiny smile. "Sometimes I forget how little you all know about magic."

"Hey!" Piper smacked him chastisingly on the arm. "Be nice, mister."

The smile turned into a full-fledged boyish grin, crinkling the corners of his eyes with mirth. "Sorry, sorry," he replied, not sounding regretful in the slightest. "We're in the middle of what used to be northern Oregon. The main entrance is in ground zero - what you know of as San Francisco - though there are many other small entrances hidden throughout the world."

"But...why Oregon?" Leo inquired.

Chris smirked. "Exactly."

He eyed their puzzled expressions for a moment before elaborating. "Think about it. Why would anyone expect the Resistance to be so far north from ground zero? Surely we would place our headquarters somewhere more important in the war - near San Francisco, or somewhere symbolically important like the remnants of Washington DC, right?"

Leo thoughtfully nodded, resting a fist against his chin while he considered the topic. "Makes sense. Demons wouldn't expect such a large grouping of witches and magical folk to be hidden in the countryside - they would look at major landmarks and sites of magical power first, thinking you're somehow concealing the location near a magical or electrical power source."

"Right," Chris nodded. "So we chose one of the least likely locations we could think of, and built underground. Then we connected ourselves magically to locations where we need to scout or fight, such as San Francisco."

He began trekking towards the distant form of his Valkyrie comrade once more as he spoke, spurring them to follow. "We try to keep things as open as possible, so people won't feel claustrophobic when they think about how far underground we are. Thankfully, with magic, there's no danger of a cave in or explosion; the only security we have to worry about are the entrances, exits...and the wards."

Reminded of his current unfinished project, Chris' expression darkened into a frustrated scowl. Phoebe laid a comforting hand on his arm (slowly, as she'd learned through trial and error that he was _far_ more jumpy in this time than in their own), silently encouraging him to cheer up. He gave her a slight nod in gratitude, and they continued onward in silence until they reached Erica's position. She stood in the middle of a marked off patch of dirt just like others of its nature, evenly spaced apart throughout the training area; presumably, this was where Resistance fighters trained in mock battles with each other, judging by the people battling nearby and the odd discolored parts of sand near each designated arena, as though scorched by various magical powers.

"Finally," Erica snarked at them. "Enjoying the scenery?"

Paige smiled sweetly at her. "Why yes, thank you for asking."

The Valkyrie scowled but apparently decided to ignore her, hefting a battle axe with spiked edges in one hand as she turned toward Chris. "No powers to start with, as usual. Ready?"

He released a soft sigh of resignation, then separated from the others and trekked over to the other side of the marked area. "If we must."

"You've been stuck here for a week and still have no plan for getting back to the past." Erica frowned intently at his reluctance. "If you're going to be in this time for much longer, you need to get back in shape. Being in the past has made you weak and lowered your guard."

Chris scoffed. "That's ridicu-"

The rest of his sentence was bitten off into a soft curse as he ducked sideways, a small throwing knife hurtling past his ear entirely too close for comfort. Immediately he took advantage of the momentum and threw his body into a roll, narrowly curling under Erica's opening side-swipe with the axe. The sisters gasped in unison, instinctively clutching at each others' arms for comfort.

"Hey!" Piper snapped. "Shouldn't you use protective gear or something?!"

"If he gets hit-" here Erica paused, flipping backward to avoid a vengeful lunge from Chris' outstretched hands, in each of which a thin athame was clasped (which had again materialized out of seemingly nowhere, to Phoebe's mounting frustration). "-then he deserves the mark it will leave!"

"Yikes," commented Paige, scrunching up her nose in distaste at the Valkyrie's attitude.

The visitors from the past huddled together on the sidelines of the duel, watching with growing amazement as the two soldiers lunged at each other, parrying, dodging, and otherwise doing their best to leave more than a glancing hit on their opponent. Even to their inexperienced eyes, however, it was clear that Chris wasn't quite at the same level as the battle maiden. As the duel raged on, he showed clear signs of weariness- faltering slightly in his dodges, breathing far more erratic than when they'd first begun to fight, and fumbling at times when trying to land a hit with one of the athames he dual-wielded. It was very evident that he'd grown to rely far too heavily on his telekinesis in his jaunt to the past, having neglected physical training so the sisters wouldn't be suspicious of an oddly exercise-conscious whitelighter. Despite this, he was clearly enjoying himself; judging by the feral grin on his features and emerald eyes glittering with adrenaline, this was an activity he relished participating in, whatever complaints he might have offered to the contrary.

Abruptly, Erica leaped back from their close fight and crowded near the opposite edge of the marked ground. "You see?!" she demanded. "You've gotten slow. The lack of fighting in the past has dulled your skills. You are careless; weak!"

He snarled wordlessly at her in response, chest heaving with each gasping breath. The Valkyrie shook her head violently in irritation, glaring at the witch. "Get it together, Chris! If you can barely handle yourself against me, how do you expect to be able to defend _them_?"

The sisters surged back in horror as the Valkyrie angrily hurled her axe straight at them, aimed mostly at Piper. The blade tumbled end over end in the air as it sped towards them, but Piper just stared calmly and waited for the expectant blue glow of a force field to emerge from within her body.

But-

There was nothing.

Terror seeped in, building up in a slothful tidal wave as she realized there would be no assistance from her baby, and Piper's hands immediately began to rise to freeze the imminent danger, far _far_ too slowly. Her heart surged up into her throat as she thought frantically of the tiny, fragile life budding inside her abdomen.

But then the axe froze for a few seconds, mere inches from her face, and then changed trajectory abruptly and surged away; as if it had encountered an invisible wall with a delayed ricochet upon contact. An enraged roar reverberated in their ears as they turned their gazes back towards the two warriors, catching sight of Chris tackling the scarred woman to the ground, his elbow lodged in her throat. The nearby Resistance members who were training all stopped and stared openly at them, bewildered.

"How dare you!" Chris snarled mere centimeters from her face, eyes afire with sheer rage. "What the hell is wrong with you!?"

Erica coughed and then grinned jaggedly at him. "Got you to move faster, didn't I?"

"Are you crazy?! SHE'S PREGNANT!"

The look of abject, white-faced horror that overcame the Valkyrie's features almost made up for the sheer terror they'd experienced moments before.

"She- you- _what?!"_

"Piper. Is. Pregnant." Chris enunciated, his voice trembling with irrepressible fury. "With _Wyatt's little brother._ "

Complete silence reigned after this pronouncement, only the two warriors' harsh breathing ringing out in the stillness. Erica stared at Chris' furious face above her, glanced at Piper's abdomen, and a shudder visibly wracked her frame. "I- I'm so sorry…I didn't know."

After a few tense moments, an explosive sigh burst out of the witch, and he leaned back to glare down at the woman lying prone beneath him. She inhaled unsteadily, and then gazed up at him in fear. "Chris…this is the _worst_ possible timing. You have to send them back, immediately. Forget the wards!"

"I will not leave while the Resistance is so vulnerable! Besides, what the hell do you think we've been working on for the past week?" he snapped, still trembling with the remnants of his terrible fury. "Why else would I neglect sleep and training, which you _know_ I never do unless there is something more important!"

At this declaration, the sisters all glanced at each other, wondering guiltily if their whitelighter had actually been continuing their research after they went to bed each night.

"I-" Erica shook her head, still looking rather dazed. "I didn't realize."

Green eyes blazed at her from underneath dark hair. "Well. Now you do."

The whitelighter jumped to his feet, moving stiffly with exhaustion. Despite his evident anger, he extended a hand down to his friend and helped her get back up. She fidgeted for a moment, gazing at Piper uncomfortably, and then grimaced at the witch's abdomen. "…sorry."

The eldest Halliwell sniffed in return, aiming for a cool and unruffled disposition; but the tiny remnants of panic in her slightly too-wide eyes betrayed her fear. Leo hovered next to her, one hand clutching her arm protectively as he and the sisters glared at the Valkyrie in unison.

"You can trust her, he says," grumbled Paige in a dark undertone. "Fiercely loyal, he says."

Phoebe and Piper both snorted, somewhat relieved at the unexpected humor to lighten the mood. Off to the sidelines, Chris visibly took a deep breath, as if searching for inner patience, and then released it slowly as he relaxed his clenched fists.

"Well, since we're already here, it wouldn't be a bad idea to exercise a little," Phoebe commented hopefully. Her sisters and both whitelighters aimed dubious glances at her, but she just grinned at them with giddy cheer. "Come on, think about it- we've been cooped up in those library chairs all week!"

After a moment of quiet thoughtfulness, Paige tilted her head to the side in acknowledgement, one edge of her mouth curled upwards reluctantly. "I suppose...I mean, it is nice to get some sunshine, even if it is fake."

"Exactly!"

Phoebe turned to Piper, plastering a childish grin of excitement on her face. The eldest Halliwell regarded her for a moment, and then wryly replied: "Well, apparently I've been overruled, so…"

"Yay!" crowed Phoebe, who clapped her hands in delight.

Chris sighed audibly, but made no further protests than that. "It is nice to get a break, I guess. Well, there's six of us, so let's partner up to work on-"

Phoebe immediately made a beeline for Erica, bouncing up and down in place with eagerness. Rather startled by her willing partner, the Valkyrie blinked at her in baffled silence. Piper and Paige shrugged at this and moved off towards the makeshift targets nearby, leaving Leo and Chris rather stranded next to each other. The witchlighter eyed the Elder warily, but Leo calmly turned towards him with an easy smile.

"Well, looks like it's you and me, buddy."

A faint shudder passed through Chris' wiry frame. "Don't- …please don't call me that."

Leo frowned at him curiously, but let it go without comment. He moved toward one of the stocked weapons racks nearby and picked up two broadswords, hefting one up into the air to test its weight. "Say, Chris…you were pretty skilled with those athames, but when we fought in Valhalla you acted like you'd never held a sword in your life. Why is that?"

Nervously eying the blades in his father's hands as he remembered their rather one-sided duel from a year prior, Chris reluctantly answered with the truth. "…because it would have made me seem even more suspicious, obviously. There aren't many whitelighters who know how to fight or even want to, after all. Plus I had to seem like I bought into the whole pacifism thing."

Silence stretched awkwardly between them, charged with tension, and then Leo sighed gently. "I don't understand why all the secrecy was needed, but I guess that does make sense."

The Elder abruptly tossed one sword at Chris, who lunged and fumbled to catch it without injuring himself. After managing to grab hold without slicing open his palms, he flicked his eyes up in time to see Leo grin at him, devoid of any antagonism. "Care to spar a bit?"

Somewhat disturbed by the strange, continuous lack of anger from his father, Chris nodded warily. Extending his feet into a more balanced stance for parrying and dodging, he readied himself once more for battle.

 

* * *

 

Nearby, Phoebe bounced on the balls of her feet and grinned toothily at Erica. "Hey, so…can you show me how to move as fast as you and Chris do?"

Erica tilted her head and sized up the witch before her. "Sure, if we trained every day for several months."

"Whaaat?" she whined in response. "But I already have some martial arts training!"

Surprised by this, the Valkyrie pursed her lips and surveyed her with a keener eye. "Alright then, show me what you've got."

Exactly three minutes and twenty-two seconds later, Phoebe was flat on her back and groaning up at the sky. Erica stood above her, not even trying to hide her amusement. "Well that was fun. So where did you learn to fight, Halliwell?"

Phoebe pouted at the fake sky above her. "The Source of All Evil."

At this pronouncement, the woman threw her head back and laughed uproariously. Resigned, Phoebe let loose a sigh and waited for the laughter to end as she picked herself back up off the ground. Erica quieted moments later and shot her an amused glance…then did a double-take at her expression. "Wait, you're _serious_?"

"Belthazor," confirmed the witch, with a helpless shrug.

Her sparring partner stared at her incredulously, then glanced at Chris as she muttered under her breath. "Can't believe he's never told me this before…"

Phoebe privately thought to herself that she'd likely never shared the tale with Chris. She didn't think she would ever share that embarrassing part of her past with any of the next generation of witches, for that matter. Possibly not even her own future children, except perhaps as a lesson of what type of man to _not_ fall hopelessly in love with.

Distracted by her thoughts, she didn't notice Erica visibly shake herself out of her astounded stupor until her voice sounded once again. "Well, he taught you the forms rather well, but it seems like he didn't incorporate realism into his teaching methods nearly enough. You hesitate on your kicks, and you leave lots of openings when you get ready to punch. You also stick too much to the formalized stances and not enough to the 'quick and dirty, save your life' type of fighting."

"Hey, this has saved my life plenty of times," she protested.

"In case you haven't noticed, the demons of this time are a little more advanced than your average 2004 demon." Her voice was thick with sarcasm, but she also seemed genuine about imparting this advice, so Phoebe found herself more accepting of the blatant disdain than she would otherwise have been. "I'm not sure why you learned how to fight from the Source, but I suggest you forget some of his training and adapt your style to be more like a desperate bid for survival, rather than a demonstration of the right forms and stances."

Thinking back to the way Chris had fought so fiercely for them during their desperate flight through the city streets, using all available resources and incorporating every movement of his body into some form of attack or defense, Phoebe thought she might have a good grasp of what Erica meant. Taking a deep breath, she nodded and readied herself for another duel. "OK. Show me."

The Valkyrie grinned in fierce approval.

 

* * *

 

Nearly one hour later, Chris and Leo called it quits and shelved their borrowed swords, sweaty and tired after several mock duels.

"You're a quick learner," Leo commented approvingly, aiming a friendly smile at the younger man. "I'd say you're a natural, but I think it has more to do with your strong willpower."

"So I'm basically learning through sheer bullheadedness?" Chris demanded, softening the sarcasm with an amused grin. "I'm not sure if that's a compliment or not."

Leo laughed, relieved that they were finally able to connect on some level, without that corrosive hatred poisoning their every interaction. He didn't quite believe the witchlighter's story, and still wasn't sure how he felt about all of the past deceit, but he was willing to put that aside in light of everything else he'd seen from the man. Seeing the physical evidence of how much he'd suffered for the cause of saving Wyatt overruled much of his former misgivings. Chris remained oddly nervous in his presence, but at long last they were able to have a civil conversation again.

"Well, it should be almost dinnertime," remarked Chris thoughtfully, interrupting Leo's musings. "Let's go tell the sisters to wrap it up."

He approached Piper and Paige to impart this information, while Leo separated from him and headed towards Phoebe and Erica. For the beginning of their training, Piper and Paige had devotedly practiced their powers, with Paige hurtling various objects and debris through the air with her telekinesis, and Piper attempting to freeze or explode the moving targets, hoping to work on her aim and response time while Paige fine-tuned her movement control. By this time, however, they'd simply degenerated into conversing next to the rubble, tangible evidence of their successful (and subsequently neglected) practice. As Chris approached, he caught the tail end of their ongoing conversation.

"-just hope everything's okay…" Piper confided, her expression pinched with concern.

Paige rolled her eyes at her sister in response and huffed. "I'm sure the baby is fine, Piper. Stop worrying so much."

"Then why was there no force field?"

"What's this about a force field?" Chris inquired in confusion, coming to a halt at their side. _I don't remember any stories about special pregnancy powers; what in the world…?_

"Oh, Piper's just being a ridiculous paranoid mommy," Paige assured him with a prolonged eye-roll.

"I'm serious, Paige!" Piper implored earnestly. "What if the time travel damaged him?"

With furrowed eyebrows, Chris attempted to reassure his mother. "Trust me, the baby is fine, Piper. What makes you think-"

The eldest Halliwell huffed irritably at him and interrupted. "When I was pregnant with Wyatt, he generated a force field whenever I was in danger that protected me. But when Erica threw the axe at us, there was nothing."

Chris' mouth dropped open in shock and he simply gaped at her, apparently rendered speechless.

"See?!" cried Piper, throwing her arms up. "I knew there was something wrong!"

"What? No, nothing's wrong with him. But, wa- wait, wait, back up a second," Chris stuttered, visibly unsettled. "Are you telling me Wyatt had powers _from the womb_?!"

Piper blinked, startled by the childish note of indignation in their whitelighter's voice. "Er…yes?"

For a long moment, he just stared at her blankly, his parted lips the only obvious sign of his outrage. Just as the silence began to stretch into awkwardness, he turned on his heel abruptly and hissed, " _Unbelievable!_ "

With a rough, violent gesture, the witchlighter angrily flung the debris scattered at their feet into the nearest training target, viciously slicing it into small, unrecognizable pieces. The sisters both jumped at the unexpected noise as the remains clattered to the ground, and then warily eyed him as he stalked off without another word.

After a few moments of baffled silence, the siblings turned to face each other in unison.

"What the hell was that about?" Paige wondered out loud.

Piper raised her eyebrows. "I'm guessing there's some unresolved jealousy issues there."

"Yeesh. Men!"

 

* * *

 

"Wow, Phoebe, great job! You've really improved a lot."

Panting and sweating, Phoebe flashed an exhausted grin at her former brother-in-law, who stood off to the sidelines watching the last moments of their duel. "Thanks, Leo! What's up?"

Erica relaxed her aggressive stance and lifted thick braided hair with one hand to cool off her neck. "I'm assuming it's almost dinner time?"

Leo nodded in confirmation, sticking both hands loosely into the pockets of his borrowed pants.

"Phew! Good, I could use a break," lamented Phoebe, stretching her sore muscles with a groan. There was a distinctly audible pop, followed by a quiet, happy little sigh from the exhausted witch.

"You did well, Halliwell." The Valkyrie acknowledged with a respectful tilt of the head, her mass of braids swaying forward over her bare shoulders. "I would be honored to spar with you again."

Phoebe smiled toothily in response, feeling rather giddy that she'd managed to connect with the prickly woman that Chris seemed to regard so highly. One thing that Chris never offered lightly, aside from secrets, was his respect.

And speaking of Chris…

"…so what's got you all worked up?" questioned Erica wryly, the corners of her lips twitching in amusement as the witch hybrid stomped in their direction. Phoebe could just barely make out the baffled expressions on her sisters' faces, several yards behind him.

"The unfair irony that is my miserable life," he snarled, stalking past them without any further explanation and heading for the cavern's only exit. They watched his retreating back in bemusement for a moment, before being joined by the remainder of their ragtag group. Erica jogged to catch up with him whilst the sisters chattered happily, enjoying their reprieve from the stuffy library and belatedly following the two freedom fighters at a distance, Leo trailing along silently. Despite the girls' new-found devotion to the cause, they still weren't quite used to being so constantly dedicated to magical pursuits without breaks for fun or sister time. The Valkyrie rolled her eyes at their carefree nature, then studied the fuming man walking beside her.

It really was quite astounding that he'd managed to stay a whole year in the past, in constant contact with his family, and still somehow kept his identity secret. Stupid of him, but nonetheless impressive. And if that wasn't enough of a startling secret to keep, there was also the strange way he had combined his powers to stop the axe she'd thrown, closely intertwining them so it had appeared as though only his telekinesis had been used.

"…you're hiding your powers from them?"

Chris grunted in acknowledgment, but otherwise remained silent, still seething.

"It might be useful to-" Erica began pointedly.

"In case you have forgotten," he snapped, stopping and turning abruptly to face her with a thunderous scowl. "Molecular manipulation is a power reserved _only_ for the Halliwell lineage. If I use it, I may as well paint a giant neon sign above my head saying, 'hey, look at me! I'm your s-'"

His mouth snapped shut before he could voice his most important secret, jaw visibly working as he ground his teeth in frustration. After running a hand through his hair irritably, Chris blew out a sigh through his nose. "Sorry. I shouldn't have let things get to me like that."

The Valkyrie shrugged, unconcerned. She verbally bit people's heads off on a daily basis, after all, so who was she to judge his outburst? The Halliwell temper was renowned throughout the world now anyway, after Wyatt's large scale tantrums.

"So, hey guys! I'm wondering why we can't just orb to the kitchens?" Paige called out to them as the rest of the group approached. "Little tired here!"

Erica slanted a glance at Chris to gauge his mood, and at the sight of his disgruntled expression, decided it would be best to allow him more time to cool off. So she turned toward the witches and responded in his stead. "P.A. is sealed so that no rogue magic can escape the area. It keeps any accidents from happening while people are training their powers, especially new ones that are wild and uncontrolled. You would be able to orb inside from anywhere in headquarters, but you cannot orb out once you are inside."

Paige quirked her lips in response as she thought this through, and then shrugged. "Makes sense, I guess. I was just hoping to avoid that…rather long walk."

Phoebe groaned faintly in acknowledgement, still tired from training with the brutal Valkyrie. Chris and Erica shared an exasperated look at the sisters' laziness, and then they all headed for the mess hall.

Waiting for them outside the double doors, however, was none other than the telepathic witch who'd informed them about the dangerous state of the Resistance when they first arrived a week ago. It didn't take an empath to see the grim worry in her expression. Chris hesitated for a moment at the solemn look on her face, but then quickly sped up to join her side, Erica right on his heels.

"Angela, what's wrong? What's happened?" He demanded urgently.

"The traitor has made their next move," the aged woman responded quietly. "An entire scouting party was captured this morning. They were scheduled to check in and report at midday, but never did. We just received word from one of our spies that they have been captured and are being held in Camelot."

Chris swore. "What was their mission? Did they know anything that could lead the Regime here?"

"Unfortunately, yes. They have access codes to Safehouse 4. They don't know the true location, only the connection portal, but...if the Regime can obtain the information from them, we will have to seal it off or evacuate everyone there."

Erica grimaced at the news. "We can't lose another Safehouse."

After a moment of tense silence, Chris sighed and closed his eyes in resignation. "Initiate a total lockdown. No one comes in, no one leaves."

Angela eyed him with a slightly tilted head, assessing his intent. "And those who are outside right now?"

"…send word that they need to be back within the hour." His expression darkened, cold and unflinching as he proclaimed their death sentence. "Or they will be lost to us."

"But that's-!"

"Done," Angela responded, ignoring Paige's protest. "Chris, can you-?"

He nodded and waved his hand in response, orbing her to the council-room entrance so she could call for the others.

"You can't lock them outside, Chris!" Phoebe protested immediately. "At least make sure everyone gets back safely before sealing everyone inside."

Emerald eyes swiveled around to glare at her, unyielding. "What's more important to you? A few lives, or tens of thousands?"

" _All_ life is important!" Paige retorted.

"Yes, it is. But this is a war, and people die every day. Sometimes we have to make a choice between a small tragedy, or a massacre."

"That's…" she trailed off into silence, sorrow clouding her expression. "That's not fair."

"War never is."

Somewhat surprised by the lack of protest from the remainder of the group, Chris turned to look at his parents quizzically. They were staring at the ground forlornly, aware of the truth of his statement but hating it all the same.

"Piper?"

She raised her eyes to focus on the sister who'd called her name, thinking back to a time long ago when she'd been forced to let the future remain unchanged, even if it meant watching that sister burn alive. "We learned this long ago, Phoebe. Sometimes…sometimes there's just nothing you can do."

In the silence that followed her broken declaration, Leo frowned. "No. There is always a choice."

"And what would you have me do, huh Leo?" demanded Chris, scowling at him. They were beginning to attract a crowd of eavesdroppers as people walked by to enter the kitchens, but he ignored them in favor of trying to get a rise out of his father, sick of feeling so out of balance around him. "Should I put this whole Resistance in danger, just to make sure everyone outside the wards makes it back in time? Should I send some people into the very heart of the Regime to fight against Wyatt's entire army, just to save a few people who weren't careful enough?"

"Careful enough-?!"

"We all know the risks when we leave this sanctuary! Everyone is willing to be sacrificed the moment they step outside into that war zone! It's easier for everyone that way when-"

"Just because it's easy doesn't make it right!"

They now had a rather large crowd of onlookers surrounding them, openly gawking at their escalating shouting match and agitated gestures.

"You are so full of it! You want to talk about what's right, Leo?! How many times have you put your job above your family? How many times have the Elders prioritized the greater good over a lesser few? How many times have you abandoned your sons to go play model Elder?!"

Leo's angry expression crumbled. "Too many."

The witchlighter flinched back in surprise, having expected more resistance rather than agreement. "Wh..."

"You're right, Chris. I chose the Elders over my family." Leo's mouth twisted upward in an ugly mockery of a smile. "Maybe if I hadn't, this war wouldn't even exist."

Absolutely stunned by this atypical stance from a man he thought he'd figured out long ago, Chris fumbled to construct a semi-intelligent response. The silence stretched awkwardly as his jaw and throat worked to formulate some form of suitable reply. Green eyes, so like his own, stared back at him beseechingly; filled with an intense remorse and shame he'd never before seen in his distant father. He wanted to lash out, to shout at him some more, craving a release for all his pent-up frustration and sense of helpless impotence; tired of making no headway with the wards, tired of verbally tiptoeing around his family in fear, tired of searching and searching and still coming up empty-handed in finding the source of Wyatt's descent into madness, and so, so _desperately_ tired of fighting this accursed war.

"I…I can't deal with this right now."

With this simple, quiet admission of defeat, he orbed away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like my work, please consider [buying me a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/cassavey)


	9. Scars of Time

_"I'm still the same, pursuing pain._

_Is it worth all that I've gained?_

_We both know how this will end,_

_But I'd do it again."_

_RED, "Fight Inside"_

 

* * *

 

In another life many years ago, in a kinder and easier world, there once was a little boy. This young boy adored his mother and his brother, and all of his aunts and uncles and cousins; he looked forward to seeing them every day and playing with them all weekend, enjoyed their stories and their laughter and watching them fight demons like the heroes from his favorite comic books.

But despite the immense love and joy that filled his life, sometimes there was still an aching, yawning hole inside him; filled with a broken loneliness that could never be soothed or ignored. It throbbed when he saw his friends at school getting picked up at the end of the day, and when they took family trips to the park or the movies; it ached when he watched movies and television shows, pierced on holidays, and burned with molten fire on his birthday.

Because this little boy had no father.

Just an endless supply of letters.

 

* * *

 

"I still say someone should have gone after him," Paige grumbled as they exited the dining hall, heading for their bedrooms in order to prepare everything they would need to take for their nightly bath. Dinner had been a somewhat awkward affair, with Erica sitting next to them and glowering at anyone who dared come close in an attempt to speak with the famous Charmed Ones, chaperoning them in place of their absent whitelighter. She trailed beside them now, seemingly resigned to her fate as temporary babysitter.

Leo heaved a weary sigh and repeated himself once more (likely not for the last time, either). "If Chris doesn't want to be found, I can't exactly force my sensing ability to miraculously find him. You know that, Paige."

"Oh come on, you mean you don't have even a _little_ bit more juice now that you're an Elder?"

"The strength of an Elder's sensing ability is only as mighty as that of the heavens from whence they came," Erica corrected with a frown. "He is the last, and the realm of the whitelighters was destroyed many years ago. Therefore, he has no resources to tap into that could bolster his power."

The sisters exchanged a puzzled glance, then turned to their former whitelighter expectantly. _"In English, please?"_ went unspoken, but was obvious in the slant of their raised eyebrows and blank expressions.

Leo eyed them out of the corner of his eyes, then sighed again. "Without other Elders to support me, my sensing isn't any more powerful than the average whitelighter."

"Oh. Bummer."

"Well, that sucks."

"Yes, it does," agreed the Elder wryly.

They shuffled along quietly after this, occasionally exchanging smiles or waves with residents as they passed by. Despite Chris' previous reassurances that they were held in high esteem for their long history of fighting evil, there were a few members of the local population that glared resentfully at them as they passed by. Though they were rare, each one sent a spike of raw guilt into Piper and Leo's hearts. After a week of reflection and shame, they were still nowhere near the point where they'd come to grips with the reality of their beloved child's twisted future. It seemed so hopeless to think that all of this might somehow be fated to occur, since all of their love and protection hadn't prevented it in the first place. Despite their agreed-upon separation in the past, here they clung to each other in overwhelmed desperation, scrambling to understand how their son had gone down such a dark path. The two extremes were impossible to reconcile inside their head; how on earth had such an innocent child become _that_?

"I don't understand," Phoebe said suddenly as they passed another sullen local, who stared balefully at their group. "I thought Chris said no one blamed us for Wyatt turning evil?"

Erica gave a soft and nearly imperceptible sigh, closing her eyes as though praying for patience. "Chris is...ever an optimist."

"Wait, are we talking about the same Chris here?" Piper snorted, laughing openly in response to this ridiculous statement.

"Um, yeah," agreed Paige with evident disbelief. "Mr. Chris 'Doom-and-gloom, get-your-lives-together' Perry is _so_ far from being that positive."

The Valkyrie's lips quirked up in obvious amusement, which she made no attempt to suppress. "While that is certainly true, Chris does have a stubborn streak of optimism he can never let go of. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he still believes that Wyatt can be saved, that he was meant for good instead of such great evil. He also believes that all people have an inherent source of good in them, even those that perhaps he should not extend such trust to."

"You're crazy!" Piper insisted with a sarcastic chortle of laughter. From what she had witnessed, Chris was _far_ more like her late sister Prue - stubborn, paranoid, and always ready for the other proverbial shoe to drop in every situation.

Erica raised an eyebrow at them. "How then do you explain Bianca?"

The sisters stared at each other for a moment in disbelief, then turned back to the Valkyrie warrior and replied in unison: "Love."

"There is that, yes, but that came much later. When she first defected to our side, there was a great uproar over her presence. No one wanted her here, thinking she was a spy of the Regime. But Chris stood up for her, stubbornly allowing her the chance to be good and fight on the Resistance's side, despite her history and her family. Said that he would have never made it out of Wyatt's castle without her." Erica paused for a moment and shrugged. "Yes, he is cautious and extremely paranoid. But he also believes in giving everyone a chance...even if that chance is given under very watchful guard."

"Wait," Piper said suddenly. Her eyebrows furrowed as she replayed the last few sentences in her mind. "What do you mean, he would've never made it out of Wyatt's castle? I thought they were friends before he came to the past. In that...broadcast, Wyatt was angry about his betrayal."

Erica inclined her head in agreement before the eldest Halliwell had even finished speaking, her braids sliding forward over her shoulders. "This is true. I do not know the full story, but sometime after Chris convinced Wyatt he was on his side and infiltrated the Regime, Bianca was assigned to guard him and keep him from harm; he saved her from death, earning her loyalty and love. She assisted him in escaping the castle many, many times for his missions. It was her idea to travel to the past and fix everything before the destruction could happen. Partly because we are fighting a losing battle, but also because it became too dangerous to continue his double life as Perry Falcon, leader of the Resistance, and Lord Christopher, of Wyatt's Regime."

The sisters froze immediately and stared at Erica in naked horror.

" _Lord_ Christopher?" Piper choked out, her voice sounding slightly strangled.

Erica stopped walking as she noticed their disappearance from her side. She turned to them in mild surprise, dark eyebrows furrowed to show her puzzlement. "I thought you were aware of his time as a spy?"

"Well, yeah, but- _Lord_ Christopher?!" Paige cried indignantly, wide eyes focused on the warrior.

The Valkyrie frowned slightly at the mingled outrage and horror on their faces, then she glanced at Leo in curiosity to see his reaction to this news. His skin had paled visibly, but the expression on his face was more one of resignation rather than surprise.

"He was Wyatt's right hand, wasn't he?" the Elder questioned with a soft tone.

Erica tilted her head to the side as she considered his statement. "Not exactly. Lord Wyatt is fiercely possessive and keeps a firm hand on that which he considers 'his.' Though the demons referred to Chris as 'Lord' as with Wyatt, in truth he was more of an unnaturally valued pet. He was untouchable - anyone who harmed him would merit instant torture and death. But he was not allowed to leave Wyatt's castle without a guard or small army to keep an eye on him. Though given freedom to practice magic openly and walk around, he was still just as much a prisoner as the people in Wyatt's dungeons. The golden swan in a gilded cage, if you will."

Phoebe exchanged another puzzled glance with her sisters. "Okay, I'm still not understanding you here. How did he and Bianca leave all the time without someone suspecting?"

A spark of fierce pride flared within Erika's dark eyes. "Chris is one of the most resourceful witches I have ever met. They worked secretly at night and slipped away during the times when Wyatt was otherwise occupied. He spirited away a few prisoners almost every night."

"And no one _noticed_?!" Paige gasped incredulously. It seemed unbelievable to think their young whitelighter could have managed such extreme subterfuge, even with the assistance of a trained assassin. They'd been suspicious of his motives and actions for so long, it seemed impossible that such a powerful witch and his army would miss something so obvious.

Erica's enthusiasm dimmed visibly at this question. "Well...for every one he saved, ten more took their place. Lord Wyatt had better things to do than take inventory of the cattle in his cellar."

Piper lifted a hand and placed it on her chest, pressing against the throbbing ache hidden within. No matter how much she learned about this desolate world, it was still devastating to hear of her beautiful child becoming such a monster. _How_ did they let things become this way?

"I just can't believe that Wyatt didn't at least, y'know...suspect _something_ ," Phoebe insisted with a baffled frown.

Shrugging, Erica replied: "Wyatt has always believed that Chris is on his side. It never occurred to him that they might disagree on his plans for the world, not until Chris was already gone and out of reach in the past."

They walked in silence for several minutes, each of them reflecting on this new knowledge and trying to fit it into their mental view of the witch hybrid. The orb lights mounted upon the stone walls began to dim as they continued onward, signaling the beginning of the night hours and the approaching curfew for citizens. As the shadows beneath their feet lengthened, Leo suddenly realized something rather specific about Erica's explanation; something that, in hindsight, should have been obvious from the start.

"Chris Perry isn't his real name."

It couldn't be, not if he had been using 'Perry' as his Resistance moniker. The similarities would have been too obvious to the demonic army, not to mention Wyatt himself.

The sisters turned to look at him immediately, startled once more. Erica simply laughed at him in derision. "Well of course it isn't. Would _you_ make your identity obvious, in his place?"

The time-travelers exchanged loaded, uneasy glances. "Well..." Phoebe said uneasily. "She does have a point."

By this time they had finally made it back to their assigned rooms, and here Erica inclined her head toward them respectfully before abruptly walking away in silence, presumably to her own room.

In the awkward, quiet atmosphere left behind by their startling discoveries, Paige decided to voice what had been on her mind for the entirety of their trek through the winding, cavernous tunnel systems of the Resistance.

"Hey guys? Just wondering here...um, why didn't we just _orb_ back to our rooms?"

 

* * *

 

Chris was 7 years old when he and his brother saw their mother crying for the first time.

Intending to surprise her with breakfast for Valentine's Day, he had gleefully used his telekinesis to nudge open her bedroom door, tray of lopsided pancakes and runny eggs clutched eagerly in his tiny hands, while Wyatt carried a large glass of orange juice and a vase of hastily picked flowers from the yard. He had opened his mouth, intending to announce their presence with a loudly shouted "Good morning!" only to freeze in the doorway as he caught sight of her sitting on the edge of the bed, clutching a picture frame and facing away from the door. Her shoulders were hunched and shaking as though with uncontrollable laughter, but the quiet sobs emanating from her throat told him otherwise. Tears fell freely from her eyes, dripping so swiftly they hit the picture frame directly instead of rolling down her cheeks.

With a sinking heart, he realized there was absolutely nothing they could do to help; they couldn't make the man in the picture frame magically appear to chase away her sadness, and there was no spell he could think of that would force him to stay.

Their father had more important things to do "Up There," after all.

Chris breathed a weary sigh and rubbed his forehead, hoping to chase away the old memories. Being around his family, here in his original timeline, was somehow infinitely harder to endure than the time spent around them in the past. Whether that was because of their prolonged contact or the proximity to his real life here in the Resistance, he still wasn't quite certain; but it was chipping away at all of his usual defenses at an alarming rate.

_("You're right, Chris. I chose the Elders over my family. Maybe if I hadn't, this war wouldn't even exist.")_

Growling under his breath, Chris ripped his gear off and flung it savagely at the wall. Remembering his father's earnest words still filled him with an incomprehensible mix of rage, sorrow, resentment, and (oddly) guilt. It made no sense; _why_ was the man so unbelievably _different_ from his memories? The Leo he'd known all his life did not match the Leo from the past in any recognizable way, save for physical appearance. He was so incredibly devoted to his family; when Chris structured the disastrous encounter with the Titans the way he had, he'd expected Leo to sever all ties with the family upon his ascension to Elder status - the way he had in Chris' lifetime. But even after becoming an Elder, the man still refused to stay away, breaking the most sacred rules of the heavens just to remain close somehow even though Piper continued pushing him away. How could sending him to Valhalla cause such an immense change in his father's natural character? Why would the act of driving him away instead cause him to fight _harder_ to stay with the family? It just didn't make sense.

He stopped suddenly in the act of gathering clean clothes, eyes staring unseeing at the messy contents of his room. What if his father _hadn't_ changed because of Valhalla? Rather, what if Leo had always been as he was now, and the event that changed him so drastically in the timeline he knew was actually the same thing that had set Wyatt on the path of evil?

If something tragic and irreversible had happened when Leo was close to the family, how incredibly guilty would he feel for being unable to prevent it? Would it drive him away, thinking that his presence was somehow the catalyst or driving force behind the attack? Would the shame overwhelm him every time he looked at his two infant sons?

Or, was it something simpler, like a fear of getting too close to his second son, lest the same thing befall him?

Groaning to himself, Chris raked a hand wildly through his hair and tossed his shoes with careless disregard into the nearest corner. It was utterly pointless to dwell on this, on maybes and what-ifs, with only guesses and supposed facts as fuel for his assumptions. Whatever the reason, Leo was clearly a different sort of person than the father he had known or built up in his mind, and he needed to shape up and stop letting those differences get in the way of his mission and ability to handle unexpected situations. If he didn't get it together, a lot of people could die from his inattention and distracted focus preventing a calm mind during a disaster situation.

He heaved a weary sigh at himself. "Come on, Chris. You need to get your head in the game."

Shrugging off the memories and anxious musings, he clutched his bundle of fresh clothes and strode towards the door of his room. He shoved it open carelessly with one shoulder and passed through the faintly shimmering ward, intending to walk the entire way to the bath house to give himself something else to focus on; but he froze in the doorway as he caught sight of the exact subject of his thoughts, standing with the sisters in the middle of the hall at the entrance to their rooms. They turned at the sound of his door opening, and honed their gazes directly upon him as if driven by a magnetic pull.

He could see it in their faces the moment they noticed the blood and black ichor coating his entire body. Their eyes widened, mouths dropped open in shock, and then Leo leaned forward as if he were about to orb straight over to him, hands already beginning to glow with a bright, healing light.

_Yeah, not happening._

With narrowed eyes, the witchlighter quickly orbed away, aiming for the shadows of an intersecting passage close to the entrance of the bath houses. He waited there for several tense minutes, waiting to see if they would follow him, then eventually relaxed his muscles and entered the men's bath.

It would be good to finally get a quiet reprieve from his family's presence.

 

* * *

 

Late that night, Piper sighed wearily and flipped onto her back to stare at the natural grooves in the stone ceiling above her. So far she had been completely unable to sleep, tossing and turning throughout the night as though her pregnancy were already in third trimester. With a grumpy huff, she maneuvered out from under Leo's heavy arm and slipped her feet into the comfortable slippers that had materialized in her room a few days ago. Suspiciously, they had appeared right after a conversation with their resident witchlighter about how ridiculously cold the stone floors in their room were.

In fact, it was thoughts of the whitelighter himself currently keeping her awake. She just couldn't seem to stop worrying about the way he had looked earlier, drenched in blood from both humans and demons, looking so exhausted a wayward breeze might have sent him to the floor. They had all argued for nearly twenty minutes after his disappearance, debating whether to go after him with the intent to interrogate and heal his wounds, or whether they should just leave him alone. Eventually they had decided he would have come to them directly if he actually wanted their help, and it would be best to not stir up anymore discord between the five of them. (After all, it's not like any of their previous interrogation attempts ever actually succeeded.)

Despite this, she couldn't seem to shake the urge to check on him and make sure he wasn't in pain or desperate need somehow. There were so many times in the past year when he'd been in obvious pain, clearly suffering, and they'd done nothing; or worse, pounced on the weakness and lashed out at him. With an irritated roll of her eyes, Piper sighed and shuffled to the door leading to the hallway, shaking her head at herself.

 _You're being silly, Piper,_ she told herself firmly. _What are you, his mother? He's probably fine; sleeping the night away - like_ _ **you**_ _should be. Stupid._

She quietly opened the door and squeezed through it, shutting it behind her with a faint latching sound. The orb lights attached to the walls in the hallway were considerably dimmed, barely giving her enough light to see by as she walked toward Chris' room. Not for the first time, she marveled at the magic involved in crafting the systems that helped run the daily lives and functions of everyone living here. It was truly an incredible design, with simple necessities of life realized through complex spell-craft and sheer magical ingenuity. Despite her longing for a normal, peaceful life, she couldn't help but wish for a similar magical community back home in their time, where they could reach out for assistance or connect with others that had gone through the same issues they faced time after time. There was Magic School of course, though that was aimed more at children rather than adults.

Her musings faded away as she reached the door to Chris' suite. She lifted a hand to knock, then paused uncertainly. What if he _was_ sleeping, and she would be interrupting his desperately needed rest? What if he-

The door cracked open suddenly, causing her to flinch back in surprise. A weary green eyeball peered through the crack between the door and the wall, focusing on her with resigned curiosity.

"Piper? What's wrong?"

"Ah-" she stuttered, rather unprepared for the abrupt conversation. She fumbled for an explanation that wouldn't make her seem just as neurotic as their whitelighter. "I, uh...just wanted to...make sure you were okay."

The green eye peeking out from the door frame blinked at her for a few moments, and then the door swung open wider to reveal the young man, looking rumpled and absolutely exhausted. His eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement as he stared at her, expression clearly communicating his disbelief of her reasoning.

"To make sure I'm okay, huh?" he muttered, scrutinizing her sharply. She plastered a smile onto her face, at a loss for words. How was she supposed to explain her ridiculous thoughts about a man whom had already proven able to take care of himself a million times over?

One of his dark eyebrows raised in question. "Can't sleep, huh?"

She grimaced; he clearly knew her far too well. "Nope."

Chris chuckled at her curt reply and opened his mouth to respond, then paused and glanced over his shoulder into the room. "Would you like to go for a walk?"

"After all the walking we did today? Are you crazy?"

Chris' expression turned rueful at her sarcasm. With a pained little smile, he stepped out of her way and gestured at her with one arm. "Make yourself at home, then."

She stepped over the threshold into his room and found it (unsurprisingly) as trashed as his little room in P3. Clothes were in haphazard piles on the floor, strange artifacts littered what little desk and chair space there were, and books and stacks of yellowed paper were laid out in an oddly precise circle around his bed, as if he were conducting some sort of strange studying ritual.

"What's all this?"

"Just more research for the wards," Chris answered quickly. He twisted his wrist in an awkward sort of flicking motion, then all of the books and papers shot up into the air and zoomed over to his desk. With a smaller gesture, the existing objects already strewn across the wooden frame scrunched up together on one side in order to make room for the new additions.

Piper clucked her tongue at him, choosing to ignore his suspicious reaction in favor of the astounding pig sty she had walked into. "This place is a mess, Chris! You need to learn how to pick up after yourself."

This seemed an innocent enough statement to her, but somehow these casual words immediately leeched the color from her whitelighter's face. His throat convulsed as he swallowed hard in response, and his voice, when it emerged, was strangled with an indefinable emotion. "Yeah...my mom used to say that too."

He clammed up immediately, clenching his jaw tight and moving over to the hastily cleared bed. Piper watched him sit down and glare at the wall ferociously, as though it were somehow to blame for whatever had happened to his late mother.

Feeling rather sorry for him (she knew all too well what it was like to lose a mom, after all), she decided to give him some momentary space to regain his composure and set about tidying up his room. Mindful of the life growing inside her, she made sure not to pick up anything that seemed heavy, and instead focused on the clothes, papers, shoes, and other various items thrown about like a hurricane had come through. After a few quiet minutes of this, Piper realized suddenly that some of the clothes weren't even for a male.

She snorted softly in amusement and raised her head to tease him with her discovery, only to freeze as she caught sight of the desperately lost, yearning expression on the whitelighter's face. He glanced away immediately when their eyes met, visibly struggling to maintain his normal neutral expression.

With a jolt of horror, Piper abruptly understood where the clothes had come from - Bianca.

She quickly finished grabbing all of the clothes off the floor and tossed them into a nearby basket (was that _hand-_ woven?), internally berating herself for what she'd been so close to saying. Over the last week she had grown so comfortable in his presence that it felt natural to tease him as if he were one of her close friends. It had been easy to forget that this was a person who had suffered a life far more terrible than hers, filled with commonplace death, betrayal, and a constant struggle for food and safety. He wasn't the type to go for a casual fling, not with the situation here and everything riding on his shoulders, and _certainly_ not after losing his fiancee.

When Piper had finished tidying up the worst of the offending mess in the room, she tentatively glanced back at the whitelighter sitting on the bed. His green eyes were fastened on her once more, clouded with a desperate, aching sadness as he watched her shuffle around the room like-

...like a mother.

_Oh. Oh, Chris...I'm so sorry._

How often had she watched mothers in the aisles and waiting lines, when Grams took them to a nearby store or park? How many times had she stared openly, hungry for the gentle love and affection of those women with their bright-eyed newborns? How much had she _yearned_ to have her injuries and emotional wounds patched up and gently kissed by the mom that had been robbed from her early life?

"Chris..." she murmured, heartbroken for his tangible pain. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"It's fine, Piper," he cut her off stiffly, glancing away once again. "Thank you for cleaning up. You...you didn't have to."

She forced a bright smile to her lips, pretending a cheerfulness she didn't feel. "Don't be silly. It's the least I could do, with everything you do for us."

His face twisted with a strange kind of bitter sorrow, and then smoothed back into the usual guarded expression. "I just do what needs to be done."

"That's not true," she insisted firmly. "You go way beyond what 'needs' to be done. And we're grateful for everything you've done for us."

He stared at her from the corners of his eyes, one edge of his mouth curling up into a sardonic smirk. " _Everything_?"

"Well..." She frowned. "Maybe not. But I _do_ appreciate your reasons, Chris. To you, it may just be a friend you're trying to save, but Wyatt is my _son_. Family is everything to me."

In the quiet stillness after this statement, Chris gave her a tiny, sad smile. "I know."

After the heavy beginning to their discussion, Piper made a point of chatting only about light-hearted things – asking him if he had a favorite color (green), when his birthday was (November), what kinds of foods were grown in the underground Garden (mostly vegetables and grains), how the magical system worked for the orb lights on every wall (he and a team of the last whitelighters had apparently molded it together, layered with several conditional spells based on time of day and proximity of living people passing by), and various other inconsequential questions that she had wondered during their time here. Chris was stiff at first, then slowly loosened up as he sensed her intent to avoid any sensitive or invasive topics. The more comfortable he grew in her presence, the more his eyes began to droop and his body eased into the lumpy mattress beneath him.

Eventually he drifted off into an exhausted slumber, twisted awkwardly against the wall behind his back with his head turned toward her. She had moved to the other edge of his bed at some point during their conversation, and now she gently eased off of it, moving around to stand in front of him. Gently, she reached out to touch his shoulder, then paused and considered the way he was always tense and guarded, ready for action at a moment's notice.

"Chris?" she murmured softly. As expected, his body flinched and his eyes shot open and darted wildly around the room. Once he had analyzed the lack of threats, his eyes drooped once more as they lazily focused on her.

"Mm?"

"You shouldn't sleep against the wall like that. Come on, I'll help you lay down."

He hummed in drowsy agreement, his eyelids already closing. Piper smiled softly and gently grasped his shoulders, tilting his lanky frame away from the wall and lowering him to the bed. The witchlighter made a quiet noise of gratitude, then drifted back to sleep. Slightly amused by the transformation from stern, focused warrior to this child-like, easygoing young man, she chuckled quietly and pulled a thick patchwork quilt over his body (apparently she wasn't the only one who froze in these ridiculous cave temperatures).

As she tucked the covers up under his chin, Chris hummed again, so soft she almost missed the sound. "...mm...thanks, Mom..."

She froze; and then her heart sank, once again burdened by the enduring sadness of this future world. How awful it must have been for him, to lose his mother and his best friend, along with everyone else he cared about, in such a short span of time. And here she was, mothering him like a substitute for her own children, both of whom were out of reach, reminding him of the woman he'd lost.

 _You're being silly._ She rolled her eyes at herself. _He's a grown man, he doesn't need a babysitter. You'll just bring up bad memories._

Still...watching him now, mostly oblivious to his surroundings, with the solemn lines of his face smoothed out and relaxed in sleep, it was hard to deny the urge to take care of him. He seemed so vulnerable, and so incredibly young; how devastating to think that this young man had to bear the weight of a global war on his back, instead of enjoying his youth and pursuing his dreams. That carefree life had been robbed from him, because she had been too powerless to stop whatever was to come.

_Not this time. I'll do whatever it takes to stop all of this from happening._

Resolved and steady once more, Piper quietly slipped out of the room and headed back to her own.

 

* * *

 

When they orbed to the dining hall the next morning, (and it would forever be this to Piper, because she just couldn't refer to such a foreign place as _her_ kitchen, even in her mind), they were greeted with the sight of several people and magical folk swarming the furthest side of a table in the center of the room. Everyone was clamoring to be heard over the din, which of course made it completely impossible to hear what anyone was actually saying.

They ignored the throng for the time being and made their way to the food counter, where a distracted volunteer brought them four trays and then promptly returned to craning his neck in an attempt to see through the mass of excited residents. Somewhat baffled, the four time-travelers accepted their breakfast and carefully selected a table far away from the loud activity.

"I wonder what's going on?" Phoebe mused, stretching her neck and leaning to one side to try and see through the group.

Paige grunted with an irritable scowl and stared down at her food with sleepy eyes. "Who cares."

Piper hid a smile at her sister's sleepy grumpiness by turning her head towards the chattering group as well. A thin figure turned and caught sight of them, then casually sauntered over. With a lopsided grin, Aidan greeted them warmly with a jaunty little wave above his head.

"Mornin', Halliwells!"

Amused by his sassy attitude, Piper raised her eyebrows and returned the smirk. "Good morning. What's all the excitement about?"

His golden eyes lit up with an eager energy. "You haven't heard?!"

"No, what-"

"It's Chris!" Aidan's smile widened into a full, toothy grin. "Remember that group that got captured yesterday? He led a special team through the San Fran' sewers and got them out before lockdown! It was the fastest rescue mission in the history of the raw! It was _awesome_."

Piper exchanged a startled look with Leo, who appeared to be stunned into silence, his mouth hanging slightly open.

"Wait- back up a sec here." Paige waved one hand irritably at the teen, looking marginally more awake after this surprising news. "Chris did what for who now?"

Aidan beamed at them with a joy so palpable, his entire face lit up like a child on Christmas morning as he bounced in place. His hyper excitement made him seem infinitely younger than his true age. "Chris launched a rescue mission for the guys that got nabbed by the Regime! No casualties at all! We've _never_ had a mission go down without deaths or severe injuries; I can't even begin to talk about how awesome this is!"

There was a slight pause, and then Phoebe turned to face her sisters. "Okay, am I missing something here? 'Cause I could've sworn he was talking about leaving them to die last night."

Aidan shook his head impatiently at her. "Chris rarely ever says what he actually means; seriously, _how_ long have you known him?"

They all collectively paused, reviewing his words in their minds, and then grimaced as they realized its truth.

"Figures," Paige grumbled. "Guess that explains the blood, at least..."

Before the words had finished leaving her mouth, a startlingly loud _crack_ shot through the noise of hundreds of conversations, reverberating through the cavernous hall.

Startled, the time travelers flinched as one and then turned toward the epicenter of the room, where the noise had originated from. The throng of fans had dissipated somewhat, many taking a few steps away from the scene within, leaving a hole through which they could make out the forms of Chris and Erica. Their whitelighter was seated at the table, his face turned away at a sharp angle, while the Valkyrie loomed over him with one arm thrown perpendicular across her chest. It was evident at a glance that the warrior had just slapped him with all of her unreserved strength.

The witchlighter slowly turned his head back toward his fellow resistance fighter, expression stony and eyes glittering like hard marbles from tightly restrained anger. One side of his face was flushed with a large, bright red mark.

"Is there a problem here?"

"Yes," she snapped. " _You_ are the problem! What the hell were you thinking?!"

Chris slowly responded with a measured and rigidly controlled tone. "Obviously, I was thinking that we couldn't leave our people to be tortured and slaughtered."

"And what about our people _here_? What if you had been captured? Did it ever occur to you just how vulnerable you would be leaving us?!"

"Of course it did," he replied, his mouth curling into a irritable frown. "That's why we took extra precaution and stealth when-"

"I don't care if you had Wyatt's thrice-bedamned force field around you the whole time! You don't just leave your people, Chris - and _especially_ not with the wards _and_ the Charmed Ones' return entirely dependent upon you!" Erica tossed one arm wildly through the air in sheer frustration, as if wanting to hit him again. "This is completely unlike you. I have half a mind to lock you up for a Magic Influence EVAL."

He stared at her calmly for a few moments, and then asked, "Are you done?"

"Are _you_?!" she snarled, absolutely livid and trembling with the force of her rage. "Do I need to remind you what's at stake here?! If you'd been taken and forced to spill our secrets, this war would be lost!"

Chris finally snapped, releasing his frustration and ignoring the large crowd staring at them. "What does it matter if we win this war but lose everything that made us good in the process?!"

A ringing silence ensued after this shout, with every soul in the room gazing open-mouthed at the intense verbal battle that had broken out right in front of them.

Harsh, derisive laughter broke through the quiet hall, emanating from the cynical Valkyrie at the center. " _Ohhh_...I see what this is about." She sneered at him, her features contorting with malice. "You just couldn't _bear_ their disappointment, could you?"

The stoic witch flinched visibly, the motion clear even from a distance. "That's not-"

"Just couldn't take them seeing what you've become, huh?" the Valkyrie continued mercilessly. "Well, I have news for you, Chris. This kind of reckless, self-righteous behavior is _exactly_ what got your family killed."

Chris surged upwards, slamming his hands down onto the surface of the table with an intensely loud _crack_. He leaned forward, eyes glinting with a deadly fury, his features stiff and hard. His voice, when he spoke, trembled with the force of his rage.

" _ **Do not**_...talk about my family."

Erica sent him an ugly, spiteful smirk. "They aren't your family anymore. Now they're just bodies in the ground."

The color drained instantly from Chris' face, but the female warrior continued before he could respond.

"I suggest you get it together...or you're going to join them."

She whirled instantly on the spot and stalked away. Every person and creature in her wake backed up to clear a wide path between her and the door, staring in gobsmacked silence.

As the wide doors banged shut behind her, Leo and the sisters looked at each other in mute astonishment, then turned as one to fix their eyes upon their frozen whitelighter. He stood rooted to the spot in utter stillness, gazing at the place where Erica had launched her verbal assault, his face stark white as though he might be ill. Only the minute rise and fall of his chest gave his body any evidence of life.

Tentatively, one of his nearby admirers stepped forward. "Hey man, don't listen to her. She just-"

" _Don't-!_ " Chris began to snap, then reigned in his emotions and continued in a slightly more neutral tone. "Don't talk to me right now. Please."

The witch quickly dissolved into orbs that jingled jarringly through the quiet hall. Everyone silently watched the orbs leave through the ceiling, and for a moment no one in the hall moved or spoke.

"And Elvis has _left_ the building," muttered Paige.

Phoebe and Piper received several disapproving looks upon their subsequent snort of laughter.

 

* * *

 

They spent the rest of the day without a chaperone for the first time since their arrival to this future world. Knowing how Chris was with projects, Piper had no doubt that he'd holed himself up in his bedroom, consumed by plans and research. She was much the same way when dealing with emotional struggles, only she would bury herself in cooking or baking rather than investigating the latest magical catastrophe. Even so, it was still surprising that their neurotic whitelighter had left them alone for such an extended time.

Left to their own devices, their intensely curious personalities had naturally taken over, and they decided to explore. Their wanderings took them through endless hallways and twisting paths forged from solid rock, filled with countless rooms for refugees and soldiers from the last dredges of the magical world. Sometimes it was obvious what kind of creature lived in each room; they passed through tiny doors half their height, defiantly painted green by their undoubtedly Leprechaun inhabitants, and also doors that had been widened or vertically extended, as if to accommodate tall creatures such as ogres or centaurs.

They stumbled across rooms they'd been shown before during their stay, such as the war room and the arena, and then found new places that both delighted and intrigued each of them in turn; Paige hummed in interest when they happened upon some sort of alchemy lab, while Phoebe crooned with delight over what appeared to be a daycare manned by kindhearted volunteers, occupied by rambunctious children of varying races from within the Resistance. Even Leo found a room to suit his personality; being the compassionate whitelighter he was, he couldn't seem to resist the pull of the infirmary when they passed by. The room had been filled with injured soldiers from Chris' rescue mission the night before, but his healing hands made short work of their stay. The sheer, unabashed awe on the renegades' faces was disconcerting, but Leo resolutely ignored their amazement over healing powers they no longer had access to in favor of easing their pain.

After extricating themselves from Leo's sudden fan club, they continued exploring until they somehow managed to make it back to the library. Piper was somewhat disappointed that they had yet to come across the "Garden" that Chris had mentioned before, but they quickly settled back into their usual routine of researching time travel and, in Paige's case, defensive ward theory. Shortly thereafter, their absent whitelighter finally orbed into their presence.

His expression was carefully neutral as he greeted them, as if their shouting match from the previous night had never happened at all. "Hey."

"Hey, stranger," Piper snorted. His cheeks colored slightly at her subtle admonishment.

"Listen...about last night. I-"

Leo quickly cut off his words, smiling uncertainly. "It's okay, Chris. We don't have to agree on everything, and...your situation is a lot different than what we're used to."

For a brief moment, a vulnerable sort of disbelief crept into the witch's eyes as he stared at the Elder, as if he just couldn't fathom being forgiven so easily. But then Chris blinked and his features relaxed into a half-smile. "Uh...thanks, I guess."

They descended into an awkward silence for a few seconds, so Piper helpfully volunteered a subject change. "We've come up with a few ideas for the time travel spell. Here, take a look."

She indicated the scraps of paper and parchment they'd scrounged up, scattered across the table they usually claimed as their own workspace. The witchlighter gratefully accepted the new topic and immediately snatched up their completed spell wordings. His eyes darted across the pages, swiftly reading through the various spells, and then he froze. Carefully, he separated one page from the rest and turned it around to face the sisters.

"Where did you get this?" he asked shakily.

Perplexed, Piper exchanged a puzzled glance with her siblings and then glanced back to the paper. "Um, we wrote it?"

"Yeah, like, not even ten minutes ago," Phoebe contributed with a baffled smile.

Chris' fingers shook as he placed the other pages back onto the table, clutching the last in his hands with a vaguely resigned look on his face. "Oh."

"What's wrong?" Paige demanded, worried by his unusual reaction.

"It's just...this is the same spell I used to get back to the past. Both times." He exhaled audibly, looking rather overwhelmed. "And last time...I ripped it out of the book and destroyed it, so no one could follow me back."

"So..." Leo began slowly, his eyebrows furrowed in thought. "You're saying that this might be-"

"The same one. Yes."

Paige shook her head. "Wait, I'm confused. What are you talking about?"

"This could be how the spell I used got into the book in the first place," Chris answered, his tone sounding almost defeated. "And if that's true..."

Piper was the first of the sisters to make the connection, horrified. "Then we're in a time loop."

He closed his eyes as if to block out the truth, placing the paper on top of their other spells and sinking into the nearest chair as though his legs could no longer support him. "Yes."

"Okay, I'm still not getting it here." Phoebe frowned at her companions. "Why would this spell cause a loop?"

"It's not the spell itself that would cause the loop," Leo explained, gesturing to the words written on the paper. "But its existence. See, if this page isn't in the book during our time, but we write it here in the future and then bring it back with us to put in the book, and then Chris uses it years later to come to the past the first time...well. Then we would be stuck in an infinite loop where Chris endlessly uses the spell we write in this time to go back to our time."

Phoebe and Paige stared at him in horror, open-mouthed.

"In other words, we've already done this before," Piper joined in, feeling rather close to tears. "And there's no hope to change anything."

"No!" Chris punched the armrests of his chair viciously. "I won't believe that! There _has_ to be a way!"

Thinking of the complexities of a time loop, Paige picked up the piece of paper with their incriminating spell and scrutinized it carefully. "Are you sure this is the exact wording?"

" _Send me back to where I'll find what I wish in place and time_ ," Chris replied miserably. "Yes. It's the same."

"Well then, why don't we change it?" Phoebe asked cheerfully, already snatching a pen from their cluttered workspace.

Leo grimaced. "If this is a loop, then changing the spell would keep Chris from coming back to warn us about Wyatt."

"But we have to do _something,_ " Paige insisted. "And we don't know if this is really a loop anyway. For all we know, we might have needed to write this spell for a different reason later on in the original timeline, and Chris used _that_ spell rather than _this_ one."

Phoebe turned to their whitelighter, leaning forward to gaze at him earnestly. "Chris, you knew us; you grew up with us. Did we _ever_ mention anything like this to you? Did we ever act like we'd met you before, or knew things about you we shouldn't?"

"I don't know," he answered wearily, burying his face into his hands. "I was too young, I don't remember."

A defeated aura of gloom settled over them, lapsing into an extended silence as they each scoured their brains, hunting for some way to fix this latest discovery.

"Falcon!"

All five of them twitched in surprise at the sudden loud voice calling across the library. They turned as one to watch as a frantic resistance fighter jogged into the room, clutching a small device in his white-knuckled fist.

"Falcon, you need to see this!"

"Jerek," Chris began helplessly. "This isn't really the best time-"

The man skidded to an abrupt halt and thrust the device toward him, panting. "It's Wyatt...broadcasting...asking for you."

Their whitelighter swallowed visibly, paling in fear. He slowly raised a trembling hand and reluctantly took the device from the newcomer. For a long moment, he simply held the object in his lap, staring at it as though it were a bomb about to explode in his palms.

"It's set up so he can't track our location, right?" Chris asked finally, glancing up at Jerek. The man nodded several times, still winded from running through long tunnels. Phoebe quickly jumped up from her armchair and ushered him into it, gazing at him with overly bright eyes. Piper quirked an eyebrow at her sister's obvious attraction, then turned back to focus on Chris.

His thumb hovered above a button on top of the strange device, hesitation obvious in every line of his tense posture. After a long moment, he pressed down and a screen made of light shot up into the air, hovering over their table.

Wyatt's face filled the screen.

"Chris."

"Hello, Wyatt."

"I seem to be missing several prisoners. I don't suppose you plan on returning that which is mine?"

"They don't belong to you," Chris said tersely.

Wyatt smirked confidently in the face of his adversary's irritation. "I own the world, Chris. Everyone and everything in it is mine."

Piper slid her eyes away from the terrible image of her evil son, and instead watched as their whitelighter visibly struggled to contain his emotions.

"Get to the point, Wyatt. What do you want?"

"Well..." Her tyrant son smiled widely, closing his eyes for a brief moment before focusing once more on his enemy. "I thought you might like to know that I won't hold your theft against you."

"And why not?" Chris asked warily.

Blue eyes clouded with a dangerous glee. "Why, because I've already received recompense. You stole my prisoners and the lives of my soldiers...so I stole the lives of yours."

The witchlighter's face paled. "What?"

"Did you really think I wouldn't discover your little spies, Chris?"

Wyatt adjusted something on his end, and the screen zoomed out and panned to the side, revealing several men and women impaled grotesquely and arranged like gory artwork on a wall. Chris made a distressed noise of horror, recoiling from the screen and turning his face away with closed eyes, unable to bear the sight. Everyone in the room, including eavesdroppers from the library who had been quietly moving closer, echoed his disgust and averted their eyes. One teenager a few yards away from their group dropped to the floor and vomited.

The screen moved once more and refocused upon the face of the future world's tyrant king. "I must say, I was rather impressed with their loyalty. No matter how they suffered, still none of them would betray your little resistance group. I was quite fascinated."

Several objects in their vicinity began to shake. Chris' expression was a deadly thing, an intense visage of absolute fury, reflected further by the power of the nearly-visible wisps of magic that rose from his form.

"You...you son of a-"

"Come now, Chris, you'll want to be careful with that phrase."

"I will stop you. I swear to God, I will stop you, Wyatt."

The blond hummed with faint amusement. "You know you can never beat me, Chris. You should have accepted my offer of forgiveness last time."

Then all traces of humor and friendliness faded away from the face on the screen, leaving behind only a dangerous evil. "You will regret betraying me. And after I have killed everyone you have ever loved, then... _then_ , you will know your place."

"The only thing I know is that I will _never_ join you."

"We shall see." Wyatt's mouth curved into a cruel smile. "Oh...and give my regards to the family. I will be seeing you all very, _very_ soon."

Chris jabbed his finger at the device, cutting off the feed instantly. He glared down at it for several moments, his face twisted with a mix of disgust and sorrow.

"Remind me never to have kids."

Everyone within earshot blinked, and slowly turned to stare at Paige blankly.

"What? Can you blame me?"

Chris snorted with morbid amusement, then covered his face with a hand that shook. "We have to get back as soon as possible. We have to stop him."

"No arguments here," Phoebe said, staring at the device in Chris' hand while absently massaging her chest, still reeling from the torrential influx of emotion from the room's occupants.

Overwhelmed, Piper inched closer to Leo beside her on the couch and buried her tear-streaked face in his chest, desperately seeking comfort. Leo opened his arms obligingly, drawing her close and dropping a kiss on the top of her head. They both trembled in each others' arms and proceeded to ignore the rest of the world for a few moments, united in parental agony.

Jerek, meanwhile, looked rather uncomfortable to be somehow included in their emotional circle. "Um...I'm sorry, Falcon. Is there anything you need?"

Sighing, Chris waved a hand dismissively at him. "It's not your fault. Does the Council know what happened yet?"

The resistance fighter shook his head in response. "The call came through our main feed; bypassed all of our firewalls and security measures. He refused to speak with anyone but you."

"Typical," muttered Chris darkly. "He always did love a show."

Jerek glanced at the papers and open books strewn across their table. He frowned momentarily, and then pointed at a large map detailing the global Nexus locations. "Sir...forgive me, but I think you've forgotten one of these."

Chris' eyebrows furrowed immediately. He leaned forward with a frown, staring down at the map with focused scrutiny. "What do you mean? This should be all of the known locations."

"One of our scouting missions during your absence uncovered an abandoned ritual site, left over from the fall of Atlantis." The man extended his arm further and pointed at a tiny grouping of islands off the western coast of Portugal, pointing to one island in particular. "The Nexus is located here, on Terceira Island."

Chris, Phoebe and Paige all stared with keen interest at the island, which appeared rather tiny on their giant map. Paige hurriedly snatched the pen off their table and drew a circle around the small land mass, while Chris leapt to his feet and strode to the bookshelf containing maps of the world. Phoebe watched as he hastily flipped through the available maps until he found what he was looking for, and then he rushed back to their table with a map of Portugal. Throwing it down unceremoniously on top of their workspace, he quickly opened it up to its full size and turned back to Jerek, gesturing impatiently.

"Show me."

Jerek held his hand out for the pen in Paige's hand, then carefully drew a pentagram on the map over Terceira. "Starting from Algar do Carvão, a volcanic vent, it goes like this...and then here..."

His words trailed off as he concentrated on drawing the shape as even and accurate as possible, then he marked a small X at the center of the completed pentagram.

"It's in a forest?" Chris asked, surprised. Jerek nodded at him silently in answer, and Chris thoughtfully chewed on his thumbnail for a few moments before refocusing on the man. "And this was just recently discovered? Wyatt doesn't know about it?"

Jerek hesitated, then replied uncertainly: "We don't know. But yes, it was only found a few months ago by the central scout team."

The witchlighter frowned thoughtfully, then sighed. "It's our best shot. Thank you for your help."

"You're welcome, sir."

Chris leaned forward to hand the holograph device back to the man. After Jerek had accepted it from his leader's hand, Phoebe turned to him with a beaming smile. "So, Jerek, right?"

The black-haired man blinked and glanced nervously at Chris, as though asking for permission to interact with one of the Charmed Ones. The whitelighter raised his eyebrows in response, the beginnings of a tiny smirk pulling at one edge of his lips.

"Um...yes, that's my name."

"I like it. So, tell me about yourself?"

Chris chuckled helplessly, unable to remain solemn in the face of his aunt's ridiculous guy craze. He turned to Leo, ignoring the conversation happening to his right (and very determinedly ignoring the odd and thoroughly unfamiliar sight of his parents cuddling). "Even if we are in a loop, we should be able to change things if we make different choices this time...right?"

The Elder hesitated, and then nodded. "In theory, yes. It's entirely possible that we're _not_ in a loop, and whatever we change after going back will cause a break in the timeline and send us into an alternate path, destroying this timeline and erasing it completely."

Chris heaved a deep sigh. "Good. We'll just have to aim for that...and _hope_."

"Well, look on the bright side," Paige interjected, trying to remain optimistic. "We're basically done - we got the spell, we've got a Nexus location; now we just need to plan our trip. Right?"

"That's right." He nodded. "And hopefully I can finish these wards before we go."

"What's taking so long?" Leo inquired curiously. Realizing immediately how that question sounded, he hastily added: "Not that you're slow, it's just that you said before it would only take a few hours."

Choosing to ignore his father's abysmal wording, Chris shrugged in response. "Redesigning the framework isn't the hard part. Finding a way to power the spell is the main thing. I need a large amount of magical power generated together, and I'll have to redirect it through portals to access all of our branches across the world. We did it one at a time originally, over the span of several months...which, obviously, we don't have that kind of time right now."

"Well, what if we-"

"Awww, come ON! Why does this always happen to me!?"

Startled, the two men turned to stare at Phoebe, who had thrown her hands up in the air and appeared to be raging at the ceiling. Piper raised her head from Leo's chest to gaze at Paige, bewildered, before focusing once more on her sister.

"Phoebe, what in the world...?"

"He disappeared!" Phoebe gestured wildly in frustration the empty armchair beside her. "I mean, come on, am I really that bad?"

" _Welllll_..." Paige drawled, delighted with the opportunity to tease her sibling. Phoebe huffed irritably at her.

Chris, meanwhile, was staring at her in utter confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Jerek!" Phoebe replied, exasperated. "He just _left_ in the middle of our conversation; didn't say bye, gotta go, or anything!"

Dark eyebrows furrowed over narrowed emerald eyes. "Phoebe...who's Jerek?"

There was a moment of absolute silence, and then the time travelers all turned to stare at Chris in wary alarm.

"The guy she was just talking to...?" Piper offered slowly, a creeping sense of dread stealing up her spine.

Their whitelighter shook his head, staring at them as though they had all grown three new limbs. "What guy? She wasn't talking to anyone."

"Yes...she was," Leo intoned slowly, his eyes widening with fear.

"Check that light-screen device," Paige suggested sharply, casting her eyes across the floor. "Maybe he put some kind of spell on it to tamper with memories?"

"Guys, what- this is crazy, there was no one here-"

"Yes there was, Chris!" Phoebe insisted, her worry rapidly increasing and prompting her to babble. "He called you Falcon, and you called him Jerek, and he's the one who gave you that thing to talk to Wyatt, and then-"

Chris held up a hand to stop her tirade. "Hang on a sec - the one who gave me the holograph was _Jenna_. She brought it to me, like...fifteen minutes ago, and then left when we were done."

"That is _not_ what happened," Piper said sharply.

Leo quickly pointed to the map of Portugal sitting on their table. "If Jenna is the one who brought the holograph, then who told you about the Atlantis Nexus?"

Chris rolled his eyes at them. "Jenna, of course. Then she left."

The four of them exchanged alarmed glances, but before they could say anything else, Chris continued. His face had suddenly grown pale and thoughtful. "Wait. Wait...you said...you said he just disappeared when you were...talking to him, right?"

"Yes," Phoebe insisted.

"And I seemed to know him, before?"

"Yes!"

"And everything that I remember Jenna doing, you remember a man named Jerek doing instead?"

_"YES!"_

Chris slowly shook his head and stared at the empty armchair in a sort of resigned horror. "Someone's changing things in the past."

Paige wrinkled her nose in confusion. "What do you mean?"

The witchlighter inhaled shakily. "I'd hoped that we were the only ones who knew what really happens to Wyatt in this future...but I was wrong."

"Wrong, how?" Piper demanded.

"Whoever goes after Wyatt...they know we're here. They're changing things in the past while we're gone; testing how much they can mess with."

He turned his eyes to focus on them with a look of abject terror.

"We're running out of time."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like my work, please consider [buying me a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/cassavey)
> 
> **UPDATE 9/23/2018: I know it's been years since this was updated, and I do apologize for the delay. It's been a...really awful couple of years. But I am 100% dedicated to finishing this story, and I will not abandon this fic. It is not on hiatus. I'm still working on the next chapter, even if I only get 5 minutes per day to do so. Thank you for your patience.**


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